Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Government United States

Biden's Cyber Leaders Go To Silicon Valley for More Help Fighting Hackers (politico.com) 25

Senior Biden administration officials met in Silicon Valley on Monday with key technology and cybersecurity companies as part of a push for more help from the private sector in fending off increasingly aggressive hackers working for adversarial regimes and criminal gangs. From a report: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, National Cyber Director Chris Inglis and other officials met with executives from 13 companies, including Google, networking vendor Juniper Networks and security firm Mandiant. Their aim was to deepen relationships between government and industry that security professionals see as vital for protecting the nation's critical infrastructure. The government already has strong relationships with some companies, such as Microsoft, that routinely warn officials about cyberattacks and help neutralize them. But Monday's meeting is part of a charm offensive aimed at growing the ranks of the government's industry allies and improving how efficiently they work together. These partnerships could offer the Biden administration a new weapon against ransomware -- one that doesn't rely on cooperation from Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose nation shelters many ransomware operators and with whom Biden is set to discuss cyber and other issues on Tuesday.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Biden's Cyber Leaders Go To Silicon Valley for More Help Fighting Hackers

Comments Filter:
  • The minute you hear the word "Cyber" you know you are dealing with a Gibson fan or a government dumbfuck.
    • by Baconsmoke ( 6186954 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2021 @11:50AM (#62055747)
      The term cybersecurity is "the" accepted term by the people who actually work in the industry doing that as their fulltime job. Nothing gibson or dumbfuck about it.
      • Now Now... We know how anything said or done by the person of a political party you didn't vote for is automatically dumb, incompetent, corrupt, yet keen enough to manage a complex conspiracy that has never been fully found out to go against everything you value.

        People feel strongly about of group of people who's only real similarity is the fact they checked a piece of paper saying they had joined that party.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Well in this case it does seem a bit odd to go to the source of most of the vulnerabilities...

      • by Anonymous Coward

        The term cybersecurity is "the" accepted term by the people who actually work in the industry doing that as their fulltime job.

        That may be so.

        Nothing gibson or dumbfuck about it.

        This conclusion does not follow from that premise.

      • Get real. If you use that word at anywhere outside of government then you will be instantly labeled as a moron. Wait. Too late.
      • A lot of people working in cybersecurity don't know how to make something secure.

      • Clearly the people tasked with securing computer systems are not exactly human language experts. Which was to be expected.
      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Not really - most people who actually have a clue use 'infosec' cyber security is generally reserved for talking to people who we think not just won't understand but can't

        • 90% of the time when someone says "Cyber" on their own steam (ie.. not just repeating the name of some company with "cyber" in the name) they are a journalist (and they are some of the dumbest and least honest creatures on Earth). However, I love watching these grey haired generals say "We gotta focus on Cyber" during congressional hearings, too. I can understand someone who has to talk to a journalist or a general using the word: they are just speaking in terms the target can understand.
  • In the future each country will have it's own walled internet. International companies will host a server in each country in order to serve that region. This will put them in that country's legal jurisdiction to face actions for malicious behavior. We're already seeing this with Facebook/Russia.
    People can still browse the international internet but have to use a VPN or proxy and explicitly leave the walled garden.

  • Definitely talk to the guys who steal people's private data, these guys know how to get the info!
  • IT security frequently makes every tool available that you'd need to credibly secure a service.

    Then some human factor causes a weakness.

    Semi-hilarious when security breach happens through flimsily secured interface, and security 'compromise' is add more hardening to a channel that has never been compromised, because it's just not 'feasible' to fix that flimsy interface.

    Even more when in the name of 'security' you do something like disable remote root access, but have a NOPASSWD: all sudoer as a workaround f

  • I understand the need for the gubmint to seek help help from Silly Valley. But there's gonna be a quid pro quo - probably something about less industry regulation and/or lower taxes and/or government contracts and/or more input into legislation and policy - and the public good will be the worse for it.

  • Working for the US government as a techie is not sexy (with a few exceptions, like maybe the NSA). And while the pay isn't bad for generic paper pushers, good technical people can certainly earn more elsewhere. So what is the government to do? It can't really hire the people it needs (and probably wouldn't know how to manage them if it could).

    But issuing contracts isn't going to work well either, because...contracts for what, exactly? Governmental systems are a horrible mish-mash of stuff that has grown o

  • by rapjr ( 732628 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2021 @12:17AM (#62057781)
    Industry and government can collaborate all they want but until they start paying attention to all those little personal computers they will never stop botnets, phishing, network penetrations, zero days, ransomware or much of the rest of it. All these things are happening _because_ they ignored the people and concentrated on their own systems and sold us a bunch of features instead of something that works well. If people can be compromised so can any computer they have access to. Computer security has to secure the computers of the people, otherwise you are building your security on an insecure base.

Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to be avoided at all costs. -- N. Alexander.

Working...