Tech Companies Take A Leading Role In Warning Of Foreign Cyber Threats

Tech Companies Take A Leading Role In Warning Of Foreign Cyber Threats

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Sandra Joyce, the head of global intelligence at the cybersecurity firm FireEye, speaks at the company's Cyber Defense Summit in 2018. Private tech companies are increasingly taking the lead in reporting information about suspected attacks by foreign actors. In some cases, the companies sell their reports to the U.S. intelligence community. Courtesy of FireEye hide caption



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Courtesy of FireEye

The U.S. government says it's on high alert for cyberattacks from foreign countries in this election year. Yet private cybersecurity firms have often been the ones sounding the alarm, and in some cases, they are selling their services to the U.S. intelligence community.


"We've seen Iran impersonating political candidates," said Sandra Joyce, the head of global intelligence at FireEye, a leading cybersecurity company.

"They've even fabricated letters that look like they're coming from concerned citizens. They get themselves published in newspapers. Well-known newspapers. But they're influence operators from Iran. They're not concerned citizens from Texas," she added.


Whether it's Iran, Russia or other foreign actors, cybersecurity companies and research groups have been often been more public than the government in identifying potential foreign threats.


"The government doesn't have a monopoly on tracking, identifying or exposing some of these vulnerabilities," said Graham Brookie, who runs the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington. "The threat is evolving and threats are becoming more diffuse, more complex and in ..

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