One of the greatest challenges now facing President Trump’s new administration is to protect the US’s critical infrastructure and its economy from the rapidly growing menace of cyber-attacks.
On Friday, the president’s nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, signalled a new direction for America’s main cybersecurity agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which, she says, urgently needs to be realigned away from focusing on misinformation and curtailing free speech and more towards preventing cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure in the US.
“CISA’s gotten far off-mission…They’re using their resources in ways that were never intended. The misinformation and disinformation that they have stubbed their toe into and meddled with should be refocused onto what their job is, and that is to support critical infrastructure … to have the resources and be prepared for those cyberattacks that they will face,” she said, quoting the recent Chinese cyber-breach on the US’s main telecom networks.
Cybersecurity fix is “harder than getting a rocket into space”
Her concern echoes the views of tech titan Elon Musk, who has been named as the joint head of a new Department of Government Efficiency”. Commenting on the recent cyber-breach of the US Treasury Department, Space X founder Musk said he could ‘fix’ the US government’s Information Technology Department, but added that the task would be “harder than getting a rocket into orbit.”
Noem told the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Friday that she is also fully aware of the scale of the challenge that lies ahead in securing US critical infrastructure against cyber-attacks from potentially hostile foreign powers such as China.
“One of the things that disturbs me the most is that we do not know how some of these espionage attacks that have infiltrated our systems have happened and that we don’t know how to stop them yet. We must make sure our country is safe from those bad actors who want to take our country out.”
CISA is run by the Department of Homeland Security and is as the leading civilian cyber authority charged with protecting troves of critical infrastructure, including government facilities, power grids, telecommunications and election systems. But CISA has been heavily criticised for focusing more on monitoring American citizens’ legitimate opinions rather than on protecting the country from foreign threat actors.
On Friday, US Senator Rand Paul Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, echoed this view. He said: “It [the Department of Homeland Security] has become an agency more focused on policing free speech, monitoring social media, and labeling political dissent as domestic terrorism than addressing genuine security threats.”
