NSA launches new cybersecurity directorate to 'prevent and eradicate threats to national security systems and critical infrastructure'

The National Security Agency announced the creation of a new fifth domain-focused internal organization that will "work to prevent and eradicate threats to national security systems and critical infrastructure, with an initial focus on the defense industrial base and the improvement of our weapons’ security."

From the announcement:

The Cybersecurity Directorate will reinvigorate NSA’s white hat mission by sharing critical threat information and collaborating with partners and customers to better equip them to defend against malicious cyber activity. The new directorate will also better position NSA to operationalize its threat intelligence, vulnerability assessments, and cyberdefense expertise by integrating these efforts to deliver prioritized outcomes.

Related, the NSA General Counsel Glenn Gerstell wrote an extensive editorial for The New York Times calling for a more proactive approach to cyber resilience and a concerted, proactive effort supporting the agency's online security efforts. Gerstell outlines four areas where policymakers must take note of.

The first is that the unprecedented scale and pace of technological change will outstrip our ability to effectively adapt to it. Second, we will be in a world of ceaseless and pervasive cyberinsecurity and cyberconflict against nation-states, businesses and individuals. Third, the flood of data about human and machine activity will put such extraordinary economic and political power in the hands of the private sector that it will transform the fundamental relationship, at least in the Western world, between government and the private sector. Finally, and perhaps most ominously, the digital revolution has the potential for a pernicious effect on the very legitimacy and thus stability of our governmental and societal structures.

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Learn more at nsa.gov/cybersecurity.