Federal Government Information Technology

Nielsen says cyber is a conflict, not an IT challenge

Fifth Domain: In the space of about one minute, Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen of the Department of Homeland Security gave three tidy one-liners, each of which could describe how she sees the problem set of cybersecurity. First: “your risk is now my risk, my risk is now your risk.” Next: “we have a weakest link problem and the consequences affect us all.” Then: “today we are all on the front lines of a digital battlefield.” Together, the lines plotted a through-line to her keynote: it will take collective action to adapt to cybersecurity threats, the attack surface is vast, and government views it more as a conflict than as a technological challenge.

While other news overshadowed headlines about cyber, the first year of the Trump administration saw massive attacks and breaches across the board. In her remarks, Nielsen focused on three of the newsier ones: the Equifax breach, which included information on roughly half of Americans; WannaCry, the malware that notably hit hospitals in the United Kingdom but as recently as last month caused a minor panic at Boeing; and NotPetya, an attack that hit companies all over the world.

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