...

U.S. continues working with Ukraine, neighboring states to shore up cyber defenses - Anne Neuberger

US Materials 2 February 2022 19:00 (UTC +04:00)

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Feb.2

By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:

The U.S. continues working with Ukraine and neighboring states to shore up cyber defenses, Anne Neuberger, Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Tech, said during an online briefing on Feb.2.

“We’ve been working closely with Ukrainians to harden their defenses and will continue to do so in the days ahead. The Ukrainians have made progress, but significant improvements and resilience don’t happen in weeks, so we’re realistic about what we can achieve, and also focused on ensuring we have incident-response capacity available to them, if needed. And there are many countries who are committed to providing incident-response capacity, if needed, and I’ve been talking to various European counterparts to coordinate that. Our focus with the Ukrainians includes working to share information, build cybersecurity capacity, and support Ukraine’s ability to respond to and recover from cyber incidents,” she said.

Neuberger pointed out that the current tensions in Ukraine and the potential for malicious cyber activity to be a core element of any escalation is a reminder to all countries of the importance of network defense and partnership.

“And there’s much we can do to build on the progress we’ve made in our countries, NATO has made in the last year on cyber defense – to use this crisis to accelerate our progress.

That’s the reason for my meetings in Brussels, meetings with my EU counterparts, consultation with the North Atlantic Council – to enhance national and alliance resilience in cyberspace – and then heading to Warsaw to meet with my Polish and Baltic counterparts as well as other members of the eastern flank NATO Allies. In addition, during this trip I’ve held virtual meetings with my German and French counterparts, building on our ongoing engagement.

Across all of these engagements, our focus is on ensuring that the U.S. and our allies and partners are prepared for any cyber-related contingency in the current environment, and also discuss how we coordinate and support Ukraine and each other in the event that such incidents occur,” she said.

Neuberger went on to add that the U.S. has put tremendous focus on improving resilience of domestic critical infrastructure.

“While there are not currently any specific credible threats to the U.S. homeland, we’re mindful for the potential of escalating, destabilizing actions in ways that may impact others outside of Ukraine. And as such, as we’ve been doing in the U.S. and many of our allies and partners have been doing, we’ve been working with the private sector, engaging, sharing specific information, requesting that they act to reduce the cybersecurity risk of their organization, and providing very focused on advice on how to do so. And these engagements are really part of the President’s overall focus on making cybersecurity a top-level priority, and [inaudible] improved domestic resilience in both the virtual and physical realm,” she said.

Tags:
Latest

Latest