Page 5 - Rob Silvers News Today

New Biden nominees to top Hill’s cyber to-do list 04/12/2021 10:00 AM EDT Editor’s Note: Weekly Cybersecurity is a weekly version of POLITICO Pro’s daily Cybersecurity policy newsletter, Morning Cybersecurity. POLITICO Pro is a policy intelligence platform that combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro. Quick Fix that will likely receive sustained oversight in the weeks ahead. — Key lawmakers still ...

President Joe Biden on Monday announced his intent to nominate Chris Magnus, the chief of police in Tucson, Arizona and a longtime critic

By Justin Katz   The White House confirmed plans to nominate John C. Inglis and Jen Easterly to key cybersecurity roles in the Biden administration. President Joe Biden will nominate John “Chris” Inglis, the former deputy director of the National Security Agency, to become the first national cyber director, according to a statement from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Sullivan also said the White House will nominate Jen Easterly, a veteran intelligence official, to lead the Cybers...

By Justin Katz   Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is continuing to call on the Biden administration to nominate someone to fill his old post, citing the jobs importance in shaping the federal governments future networks. There is a "need for somebody to be setting a vision for what the federal civilian executive branch, the dot-gov, what does it look like in three to four to five years?" Krebs said on Wednesday during a virtual for...

By Justin Katz   More than a dozen lawmakers from both parties on a key House committee are seeking information from multiple cabinet secretaries and agency chiefs that the breach involving SolarWinds Orion has had on their respective organizations. The letters sent on Wednesday by the House committee on energy and commerce were sent to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, Health and Human Services Ac...

ADVERTISEMENT “For several years, the Federal government has underestimated the cyber threats posed to state and local networks and neglected the federal government’s responsibility to help defend them,” Thompson and Clarke said in a joint statement on Monday. “Inaction has proven costly for victims – from Albany to Atlanta. And response to opportunistic breaches take the time away from defending against more sophisticated attacks.” The lawmakers described cybersecurity threats to ...

Thinkstock The Biden administration has hit the ground running on cybersecurity, reportedly getting ready to nominate what some have called a “world-class” cybersecurity team of officials and prioritizing efforts to tackle the worst hack in US history, the SolarWinds breach. The renewed effort to tackle cybersecurity matters couldn’t come soon enough. The Trump administration all but gutted the White House and other government offices of cybersecurity expertise. In a series...

Federal cyber agency reevaluating its role in countering election disinformation Maggie Miller © Greg Nash Federal cyber agency reevaluating its role in countering election disinformation The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the key federal group responsible for election security, is reevaluating its role in countering disinformation and misinformation after the agency stood up a web page to address misleading election claims last year. Acting CISA Dir...

Senate confirms Mayorkas as secretary of homeland security over GOP objections By Nicole Sganga and Camilo Montoya-Galvez Updated on: February 2, 2021 / 6:16 PM / CBS News Senate confirms Alejandro Mayorkas, Pete Buttigieg Washington — The Senate on Tuesday approved the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas to become secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), confirming the former federal prosecutor and Obama-era immigration official to lead the department b...

Department of Homeland Security stuck in neutral while awaiting confirmation vote for Mayorkas The delay in confirming President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security secretary has left the department without clear direction as it confronts a series of stark challenges, including domestic terror threats, a massive cyber breach, uncertainty at the border and helping coordinate the distribution of Covid vaccines. Alejandro Mayorkas, the nominee for DHS secretary, will have a final confirmation vote thi...