Recent federal cuts, reorganizations and other disruptions have alarmed industry leaders, who say the government is a less reliable partner even as cyber threats increase.
The Trump administration’s changes have also undermined some cyber information sharing, the cornerstone of the public-private partnership keeping critical infrastructure safe from hackers.
Because the private sector operates most critical infrastructure, it knows more than the government does about how that infrastructure works, what cyberattacks are occurring against it and what the impact of a successful intrusion would be, according to John Riggi, the national adviser for cybersecurity and risk at the American Hospital Association and a former FBI cyber partnerships official. The industry, in turn, relies on the government to supply both unique foreign intelligence and cyber threat information for which it would otherwise have to pay private firms. Small infrastructure operators with threadbare security budgets are especially dependent on this free information.
But information sharing “is taking a minor hit,” according to Errol Weiss, chief security officer at the Health-ISAC, the industry’s information sharing and analysis center. The pace of alerts from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI “definitely looks like it’s slowing down a bit,” Weiss said. Riggi described a delay in receiving threat intelligence from CISA “because of the leadership change,” though he said sharing with the FBI “continues to be very robust.”
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