Cyber Command asks Private Sector to Share Intelligence to Aid in Digital Defenses

U.S. Cyber Command is imploring that more tech companies be on the front lines of the global fight to secure the internet by sharing more of their cybersecurity intelligence in the effort to improve its defense capabilities.

In an interview, Cyber Command Executive Director Dave Frederick said Cyber Command regularly shares information during “hunt forward” operations – or defensive cyber missions carried out alongside partners – but they need more private companies to fully report cybersecurity incidents so that the company can learn from them.

Frederick, who spoke during an industry webinar organized by Billington CyberSecurity, said that the 27 hunt forward operations that Cyber Commands has conducted in the last 2 years have empowered partner countries to “immediately strengthen the defenses of their networks” and have given Cyber Command “unique insights into adversary malware which we then bring home.”

Those insights inform are shared with the Department of Defense, and with the private sector, he said.

“We’re able to share the indicators of compromise, new samples of malware that we discover from hunt forward, with the broader cybersecurity community, and they’re able to them build signatures to detect that malware and basically disrupt adversary operations targeting the U.S. civil sector,” Frederick said. “It’s almost like giving an antidote to a virus, so it’s really turned out to be a great model.”

Hunt forward missions started in 2018 as part of Cyber Command’s work to enhance election security. The missions have expanded since, as Cyber Command partners with 16 countries, covering 50 different networks including Estonia, Montenegro and Ukraine.

Frederick said that Cyber Command needs help from private industry, particularly with enhancing technology used for mission capabilities and collective defense. They secure, operate and defend the DOD’s computer systems, whose 4 million endpoints make it one of the largest globally as of 2022.

“Our joint cyber war fighting architectures are a pretty complex set of systems,” Frederick said. “It’s a group of programs that provide us our big data platform capability, our offensive weapons and tools, our defensive tools and defensive sensors, and command and control.”

Cyber Command has a good relationship with defense and telecommunication companies, but Frederick says more companies across the private sector need to report cyber incidents.

“Almost all the U.S. networks of critical importance are owned and operated by the private sector, and something that we need to do our job better is early warning,” said Frederick. “If we have companies that are seeing that they’re being exploited by a malicious cyber actor, if we can get tips to that effect, it helps us prepare and understand what we may need to do to respond from a DOD point of view.”

Frederick said that Cyber Command is currently focusing on how it can apply AI and Machine Learning to its mission capabilities.

“That’s an area that you’ll see greater emphasis on in the future from the command,” Frederick said.

Story via Cyberscoop