Dive Brief:
- The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will open its first-ever Attache Office in London, the agency announced Monday. The office is part of a larger effort to boost collaboration on cybersecurity, critical infrastructure protection and emergency communications with international partners in the UK and other federal agencies.
- CISA named Julie Johnson, who served as regional protective security advisor for the agency in New York, as the first UK attache. Johnson also served as CISA’s regional lead for federal interagency working groups.
- “As America’s cyber defense agency, we know that digital threat actors don’t operate neatly within borders,” CISA Director Jen Easterly said in the announcement. “To help build resilience against threats domestically, we must think globally.”
Dive Insight:
The London office underscores the federal government’s increasing emphasis on international cooperation and diplomacy in the effort to combat nation state and criminal cyber adversaries.
CISA has worked closely with members of the Five Eyes and other allies since late 2021 to help prepare critical infrastructure partners and state and local governments for malicious cyber activity linked to Russia’s late February invasion of Ukraine.
The Biden administration last year convened a virtual 30-nation summit designed to help combat the rise in ransomware attacks and the illicit use of cryptocurrencies that helped fuel the rise of multimillion dollar extortion schemes related to these attacks.
The State Department formally launched the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy in April, part of a larger effort to work with other nations to combat ransomware, isolate rogue nation-state actors and establish international rules on cyber activity.
