NSA Cybersecurity Directorate Focuses on Moving Forward from COVID-19

The National Security Agency’s cybersecurity directorate is focusing on ways to protect medical research related to COVID-19 and assist critical infrastructure development that could help speed up the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. In a webcast hosted by the Intelligence National Security Alliance and reported on by FCW, NSA Deputy Director George Barnes discussed how the directorate is pivoting to meet the nation’s needs to begin moving forward from the pandemic.

According to Barnes, the pandemic shed light on additional challenges the U.S. faces as it builds and improves its cybersecurity posture. For example, the pandemic has resulted in an increase in online operations from government and businesses as well as pharmaceutical companies working on a vaccine and other aspects of the response. This shift has made these groups highly susceptible to online threats from hacking groups.

As Barnes put it, the pandemic has forced the directorate to ask: "how do we protect critical activities that are vital to us getting back in a healthy state?"

NSA plans to use signal intelligence to provide medical research organizations with insight into what information adversaries are going after and what tools they are using to get that information.

"It wasn't [more than] a few days into March where phone calls were coming in to NSA asking us for our insights and our support to that community, and so we have doubled down and really accelerated and intensified efforts to reach out," Barnes said.

To ensure information is used collaboratively to identify threats, the directorate is working with the Department of Defense, the defense industrial base and non-defense businesses to create a more bidirectional relationship.

"We are tied between government and industry. Industry drives government, industry creates the capabilities, the solutions that we press into service operationally," said Barnes. "Our security can't just start once we take something on and receive it and deploy it. It has to start from the design, and we know all too well that designs are ripe for plucking."

Barnes explained that the directorate is focusing on what is possible and realistic to achieve; fostering stronger communication; and sharing information to push out threats to critical infrastructure, contractors, and the private sector at large.

"At NSA I want to do things that nobody else can do," Barnes said. "I don't want to do things that others can do. The world's too big, we have too many priorities, too many pressing needs to pursue duplication out of product."