In its inaugural bi-annual strategic plan, CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), the nation’s primary cybersecurity oversight agency, highlights the importance of taking a proactive approach to mitigate threats that takes advantage of recent advancements in AI technology. Only by adopting a sophisticated, comprehensive security posture that centers on continuous monitoring and swift, robust response to threats can organizations hope to stay protected in the current cybersecurity threatscape.
CISA identifies goals for the strategy as spearheading “the national effort to ensure the defense and resilience of cyberspace,” helping partners protect critical infrastructure, and supporting stronger “whole-of-nation operational collaboration and information sharing.” The strategy also outlines internal CISA goals focused on unification within the agency.
As CISA Director Jen Easterly notes in the report, today’s threat actors are utilizing increasingly sophisticated capabilities to undermine the U.S. economy and even the country’s democratic principles. These actors, Easterly says, focus on stealing intellectual property and sowing discord by taking advantage of the operational boundaries between government organizations; the complexity of cyberinfrastructure that spans public and private networks; and sponsorship by foreign adversaries.
“The urgency of CISA’s cyber defense mission has never been more apparent than in our approach to defending the nation from the cyber threat posed by Russia immediately after the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022,” Easterly writes in the strategic report. “We facilitated effective collaboration with public and private sector partners to ensure vigilance in the face of potential malicious cyber activity targeting the nation’s infrastructure, and we rapidly shared valuable information with those partners to help build our collective readiness. But our work is far from finished. Mitigating cyber threats requires a continuous, whole-of-nation approach that spans all stakeholders.”
