Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Critical Infrastructure Security, Cyberwarfare/Nation-State Attacks
DHS requires public-private partnership to safe vital infrastructure Chris LiottaChris Liotta) • June 20, 2024
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday introduced new pointers to help cybersecurity throughout vital infrastructure sectors. (Image: DHS)
Critical infrastructure sectors face many doubtlessly disruptive threats, together with provide chain vulnerabilities, local weather dangers, and rising reliance on space-based programs. But the best cyber threats going through the United States are from state-level adversaries from the People’s Republic of China and rising dangers related to synthetic intelligence and quantum computing, mentioned Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
reference: Protecting Election Integrity within the Digital Age
Mayorkas issued new steerage on defending towards these dangers on Thursday. He known as on sector threat administration businesses, that are accountable for overseeing the safety of America’s vital infrastructure, to work with homeowners and operators to develop and implement a basis of resilience measures. These measures ought to embody response plans “to recuperate quickly from shocks and stressors of all types,” whereas anticipating the potential cascading results of a cyberattack, in keeping with the steerage doc.
“Our nationwide safety, financial safety and public security rely on our vital infrastructure functioning reliably,” Mayorkas mentioned in a press release. “The threats going through our vital infrastructure require a whole-of-society response, and the priorities outlined on this memorandum will information that effort.”
According to the steerage, DHS plans to develop its Space Systems Critical Infrastructure Working Group to “prioritize and mitigate space-related dangers to vital infrastructure.” The public-private working group was launched in 2021 underneath the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to enhance the safety and resilience of business area programs, together with growing suggestions for managing dangers to space-based property and important capabilities.
DHS additionally encourages sector threat administration businesses to establish, pilot, or deploy AI and different “technology-enabled threat mitigation instruments” to higher defend vital infrastructure sectors. The steerage describes AI as a “transformative, general-purpose know-how” with broad impacts, together with mitigating threats to vital infrastructure.
But the company additionally warned that new threats from rising applied sciences comparable to AI and quantum computing associated to cryptography may pose dangers to delicate information held by vital infrastructure organizations within the coming years.
The steerage depends closely on SRMA to work with key stakeholders throughout sectors to implement efficient mitigation measures and establish and deal with threats from Beijing. DHS additionally requested SRMA to help its Defense Critical Infrastructure program, which goals to make sure businesses can present networked property for important missions within the occasion of a safety breach or cyberattack.
Under the brand new pointers, SRMA will play a key function in mitigating the affect of provide chain disruptions for vital programs. The Department of Homeland Security mentioned the COVID-19 pandemic “demonstrated the affect of relocating vital components of vital provide chains abroad” and warned of the potential of “potential rail strikes or different vital provide chain disruptions related to bodily assaults on vessels within the Red Sea.”
“The resilience of the nation’s civilian and army provide chains is a matter of nationwide and homeland safety,” the rules state.
SRMA was requested to evaluate its reliance on area programs and “the potential knock-on results on its sector within the occasion of a disruption.”
DHS mentioned it might in the end work with personal sector companions and SRMA to handle a variety of rising dangers, including that “vital infrastructure stakeholders should undertake threat mitigation approaches that may obtain outcomes at scale.”