Insights

Today, CISA released Mobile Communications Best Practice Guidance. The guidance was crafted in response to identified cyber espionage activity by People’s Republic of China (PRC) government-affiliated threat actors targeting commercial telecommunications infrastructure, specifically addressing “highly targeted” individuals who are in senior government or senior political positions and likely to possess information of interest to these threat actors. Highly targeted individuals should assume that all communications between mobile devices—including government and personal devices—and internet services are…

Today, CISA issued Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 25-01, Implementing Secure Practices for Cloud Services to safeguard federal information and information systems. This Directive requires federal civilian agencies to identify specific cloud tenants, implement assessment tools, and align cloud environments to CISA’s Secure Cloud Business Applications (SCuBA) secure configuration baselines.  Recent cybersecurity incidents highlight the significant risks posed by misconfigurations and weak security controls, which attackers can use to gain unauthorized access, exfiltrate data, or disrupt…

Today, CISA and the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) published Playbook for Strengthening Cybersecurity in Federal Grant Programs for Critical Infrastructure to assist grant-making agencies to incorporate cybersecurity into their grant programs and assist grant-recipients to build cyber resilience into their grant-funded infrastructure projects.  This guide is for federal grant program managers, critical infrastructure owners and operators, and organizations such as state, local, tribal, and territorial governments who subaward grant program funds, and…

Today, CISA—through the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative and in coordination with the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD)—released the National Cyber Incident Response Plan Update Public Comment Draft. The draft requests public comment on the National Cyber Incident Response Plan (NCIRP)—public comment period begins today and concludes on January 15, 2025.  Since initial publication in 2016, CISA conducted broad and extensive engagement and information exchanges with public and private sector partners, interagency partners, federal…

Today, CISA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released Internet-Exposed HMIs Pose Cybersecurity Risks to Water and Wastewater Systems. This joint fact sheet provides Water and Wastewater Systems (WWS) facilities with recommendations for limiting the exposure of Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) and securing them against malicious cyber activity. HMIs enable operational technology owners and operators to read supervisory control and data acquisition systems connected to programmable logic controllers. Threat actors can exploit exposed HMIs at…