The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has debuted a tool designed to help researchers, analysts and network defenders map threat actors’ tactics, techniques and procedures to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

The Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute developed the Decider tool with MITRE’s ATT&CK team, the McLean, Virginia-based company said Wednesday.

Decider is a web application that serves as a companion to the document Best Practices for MITRE ATT&CK Mapping and enables cyber defenders to facilitate mapping to the framework by walking them through guided questions about the activity of adversaries.

“We are excited to continue our partnership with HSSEDI and MITRE in offering the Decider tool to better guide ATT&CK mapping and help the cybersecurity community accurately understand adversary activities and make well-informed decisions that raise our collective defense,” said Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA.

HSSEDI is a federally funded research and development center that MITRE operates for the Department of Homeland Security.

U.S. Cyber Command has signaled interest in establishing an independent center focused on collecting and sharing foreign cyber intelligence, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

“We really needed an all-source approach from the Department of Defense side. And so as each of the services have their own intelligence center, there was just a gaping hole. Space set up its own, but cyber didn’t have one. And so how this will unfold is still a work in progress, but the mission analysis portion is done,” Col. Candice Frost, commander of the Joint Intelligence Operations Center at USCYBERCOM, told FNN in an interview.

The proposed center would be a joint effort with the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency and would be based in part on the National Air and Space Intelligence Center with a focus on international adversaries’ offensive cyber capabilities.

Frost said Congress may need to address questions over authorities, funding levels, workforce and other factors with regard to the establishment of the new cyber intelligence center.

“It’s just that we have validated that the need exists, and it’s going forward,” she said of the proposed center.

The Defense Information Systems Agency has completed a prototype initiative to develop a zero trust network access architecture that uses a set of commercial technologies to provide network security across the U.S. military.

DISA said Wednesday the Thunderdome prototyping effort has demonstrated and proven the ability of secure access service edge, software defined-wide area networks and other commercially available tools to enhance security and network performance.

Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, director of DISA and a 2023 Wash100 awardee, said the agency aims to help the U.S. maintain a cybersecurity advantage “above our adversaries across all the warfighting domains.”

“Thunderdome will help us achieve this advantage by making DOD’s networks more secure and thereby more challenging for threat actors to gain access to DOD systems. And our Thunderdome prototype validates our success,” Skinner added.

As part of the program, DISA deployed the Thunderdome prototype to nearly 1,500 users at three locations to test its remote and on-premises capabilities.

The Biden-Harris administration has published its National Cybersecurity Strategy, which is intended to alter the way the U.S. views the cyber landscape and use the evolving space to further its priorities.

Guided by two foundational objectives – rebalancing the responsibility to defend cyberspace and realigning incentives to favor long-term investments – the strategy details a pathway toward a defensible, resilient and values-aligned approach to cybersecurity, the White House said in a fact sheet published on Thursday.

To bring the full vision to fruition, the White House has laid out five pillars meant to foster collaboration, the first of which is to defend critical infrastructure.

With a goal of building the public’s confidence in the availability and resilience of critical infrastructure, this aspect of the strategy calls for an expansion of the use of minimum security requirements in critical sectors, the facilitation of partnerships between government and industry and the defense and modernization of federal networks.

By leveraging “all instruments of national power,” the strategy aims to disrupt and dismantle threat actors by strategically using all applicable tools to disrupt adversaries while involving the private sector and mitigating the ransomware threat.

In its efforts to reduce risk, the White House plans to “shift the consequences of poor cybersecurity away from the most vulnerable” to establish a “more trustworthy” digital ecosystem by bolstering the privacy and security of personal data, supporting secure development processes and making sure that federal grant programs back secure and resilient infrastructure.

Investing in a resilient future is another core part of the strategy. This pillar’s priorities include minimizing systemic technical vulnerabilities in the digital ecosystem, prioritizing related research and development and building a “diverse and robust” national cyber workforce.

The White House also intends to cultivate international connections through its strategy by helping partners upgrade their defenses against cyber threats, working to ensure joint preparedness and response and creating secure global supply chains for cybersecurity-related needs.

According to the fact sheet, the administration has already begun implementing the new strategy.