Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and 2020 Wash100 Award winner, has said that the agency is coordinating with government and industry stakeholders to address cyber threats like ransomware, FCW reported Tuesday.
Krebs told attendees at the RSA Conference in San Francisco that CISA is reaching out to local governments, federal agencies, businesses and operators of critical infrastructure to discuss data encryption practices to better defend systems against nation-state hacking groups and other malicious actors.
He said that organizations should take proactive steps such as patching their technologies, enabling multifactor authentication, developing an incident response plan and establishing a backup strategy.
“For years and years and years, particularly in the federal government, we’ve been focused on the nation-state adversary, the highly capable, the big four: Russia, China, Iran [and] North Korea,” said Krebs. “I think we’ve been a little bit late to the game on ransomware.”
Krebs also said that having a public communication plan as well as analog and paper-based backups will help ensure preparedness in this year’s presidential election.
