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It's Shielding Time; Big Techs to Raise Bar on Cybersecurity Defenses
In the last episode of rising ransomware attacks, Big Techs were summoned at the US White House to sit down for serious talks with Mr.President Joe Biden. This gathering shows the gravity of the menacing situation of increased ransomware and cyber attacks against software and cloud service providers, energy, banks and water utility, as they are vital sectors contributing to the economy. An attack aimed at these sectors is not suffered by that entity alone, but would rather shake the economy of a country.
This is exactly why the US Department of Justice has announced to give priority to ransomware attacks similar to those carried out for terrorism. Likewise, a model typically used for the treatment of terrorism is now specifically preserved to tend to these heinous online villains. A concise portion of the process is that it involves investigators from the US attorney offices to simultaneously share case details clubbed with technical details to the respective heads at Washington. Some of the main topics linked to such cases include anti-virus services, criminal online forums or marketplaces, cryptocurrency exchanges, bulletproof hosting services, botnets, and online money laundering services.
There’s one for the organizations and government entities if they prefer to contribute their part to the plot. On that account, the US Department of Justice has advised them to follow the White House’s best practices, with one entailing regularly testing their incident response strategies. This then reveals the spots entities are lacking in their defense. For more safety measures, organizations are advised to perform network segmentation that helps curb the invasion from spreading across other corporate access. Thanks to network segmentation, data backup can be used to restore the afflicted area of the network while retaining at least some of their business activities.
Yet cyber and ransomware attacks appear to have come back much stronger like the coronavirus which keeps evolving as humanity overcomes each stage. Seeming how the situation has escalated to the emergency ward, the US president has summoned major giants’ CEOs to uplift the situation before it hits downhill. While the masked CEOs discuss, it was announced that there will be new cybersecurity guidelines and big techs have agreed to provide financial assistance.
Amazon announced that the cyber security awareness training it developed for its own staff would be made available to the general public for free. To protect against cyber dangers such as phishing and password theft, the business will also provide all AWS account holders with a free multi-factor authentication device.
During the discussion at the White House, the big techs, the finance industry and the infrastructure companies suggested that they would take part in taking care of the growing threat in cybersecurity to the US economy. The federal government retorted back saying that this job cannot be juggled by a single pair of hands alone. Since the reality is that most of the country’s critical infrastructure is mainly driven and operated by the private sector. Then Mr.President sort of seemed to use the smooth saying how big techs have the ability, capability and accountability and threw in with a ‘I consider, to boost the bar on cybersecurity’.
After that the US authorities shook hands with businesses to work out new cybersecurity guidelines to double up the safety of the technology supply chain, as Mr.President urged private-sector CEOs to raise the bar on cybersecurity.
When that got sorted, the White House introduced the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to help the big techs and all those associated in the matter to formulate safe expertise and assess the safety of expertise with a dash of open supply software program.
Microsoft, Google, Travelers and Coalition, among others raised their hands in agreement to the new NIST-led initiative.
In thoughts of the public, Amazon expressed that it would provide a cybersecurity training program on the house, on top of providing multi factor authentication devices to some cloud computing customers starting October this year.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Biden said, citing the need to fill nearly half a million public and private cybersecurity jobs, as well as ransomware assaults and his push to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold Russian-based cyber gangs accountable. On that note, Mr.President already discussed with his Russian counterpart during the Geneva summit, by cautioning that unless Russia cracks down on hackers targeting US firms, the US’ ‘considerable cyber capabilities' might be utilized in offensive cyber operations in the future.
Surprisingly the warning appears to have worked, as the well-known REvil gang vanished from the internet shortly after, possibly as a result of Russian and/or American law enforcement activities.
Big Techs Talk Big Bucks in Cybersecurity Investments
Looks like big techs plan to raise the bar a little over the top for their part of the game, by pouring billions to double up those cybersecurity defenses and train skilled workers. They sure seem to keep it big whether the White House asked them to, for they are big techs indeed.
Starting with Microsoft declaring a $20 billion investment over five years, a four-fold increase over current rates, to accelerate its cyber security work, as well as $150 million in technical assistance to assist federal, state, and local governments in keeping their security systems up to date.
Soon followed by Google which pledged to spend $10 billion on cybersecurity over the next five years, although it was unclear how much of that was fresh money. It also stated that it would assist 100,000 Americans in obtaining industry-recognized digital skills credentials, which might lead to high-paying positions.
Other effective efforts were also pitched in, starting with IBM committing to train 150,000 individuals in cyber security skills and to collaborate with historically Black colleges and universities to develop cyber security educational centers.
Amazon announced that the cyber security awareness training it developed for its own staff would be made available to the general public for free. To protect against cyber dangers such as phishing and password theft, the business will also provide all AWS account holders with a free multi-factor authentication device.
Although ransomware was the topic of priority, there came another goal which emphasized discovering the root causes of any kind of criminal cyber activity as well as ways the private sector can help strengthen cybersecurity.
All this happened amidst Mr.President’s national security team busy with the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaotic evacuation of Americans and Afghan citizens.
