FBI BROADENS PARTNERSHIPS TO COMBAT CYBERATTACKS

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray has announced the bureau’s new strategy for countering cyber threats in remarks at the National Cybersecurity Summit.

In an official FBI release, Wray explained the strategy is to “impose risk and consequences on cyber adversaries”—making it harder for both cyber criminals and foreign governments to use malicious cyber activity to achieve their objectives.

“We’ve got to change the cost-benefit calculus of criminals and nation-states who believe they can compromise US networks, steal US financial and intellectual property, and hold our critical infrastructure at risk, all without incurring any risk themselves,” he said. The effort to sequence unilateral, joint and enabled operations against cyber adversaries is coordinated by the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force. Led by the FBI, the task force includes more than 30 co-located agencies from the Intelligence Community and law enforcement and is focused on the most significant threats.

The centerpiece of the new strategy is the role of FBI as an “indispensable partner” to federal counterparts, foreign allies and private-sector partners. “We want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to help our partners do what they need to do,” said Wray. “That means using our role as the lead federal agency with law enforcement and intelligence responsibilities to not only pursue our own actions, but to enable our partners to defend networks, attribute malicious activity, sanction bad behavior, and take the fight to our adversaries overseas.” The strategy recognizes that no single agency—or even government—can combat cyber threats alone, and that when possible, actions by the FBI and its partners will be sequenced for maximum impact. Wray’s remarks helped close out the first in a series of four events hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA.) The summit seeks to bring together cyber leaders from government, academia, and industry.

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