The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving as malicious actors look for new ways to attack agency infrastructure to gain access to critical data, national intelligence and other information that will help them gain strategic advantages. Global events and the adoption of new technologies can influence how threat actors behave, whom they target, and the risks they’re willing to take to achieve their goal. To combat these threats and manage risks, government agencies need to build proactive cyber defenses that adapt to the evolving threat landscape.
Recent attacks on critical infrastructure and information assets led to the executive order on improving the nation’s cybersecurity. In a recent interview with Forbes, Lucian Niemeyer, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment, during the Trump Administration, discussed how organizations need to create proactive cybersecurity strategy that adapts to the evolving threat landscape.
“Cybersecurity is not static,” Niemeyer said. “The cyber threat [landscape] is constantly evolving, constantly metastasizing, so the goal is to create something flexible and responsive enough to ensure that we can maintain those capabilities no matter where the cyber threat goes.”
To create proactive cyber defenses, agencies need to be able to identify which threat actors are targeting them, what they’re after, whether the network has been compromised, how to respond to a breach, and which security tools will be most effective. Cyber threat intelligence can give an agency’s security team a better understanding of the cyber threats facing them, the ability to make informed defense strategy decisions, and a deeper understanding of their exposure risks.
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In an interview with Government Technology Insider, Luke McNamara, Principal Analyst at Mandiant, explained how threat intelligence plays a critical role in building proactive cyber defenses. “Variance between which targets [threat actors] may be willing to go after, what their primary mission or goal is in extortion, and how they’re going to go about operations can be useful for better defending your organization,” McNamara explained. “By being able to differentiate those groups, government agencies can modify how they respond to various attacks.”
However, threat intelligence isn’t enough on its own to build proactive cyber defenses. Forrester found that for agencies to detect and respond proactively to emerging cyber threats they need insights and guidance from external threat intelligence partners. These threat intelligence partners have frontline experience working with multiple organizations to combat cyber attacks. As a result, they have key insights into what strategies a particular threat actor group may employ and how best to respond.
“By looking at activity in other sectors and researching those attacks and intrusions, government agencies can incorporate relevant defense methods and proactively anticipate where the threat landscape will evolve next,” McNamara said.
The cybersecurity landscape is constantly changing, but federal agencies will always be a primary target for attackers. To combat a wide range of ever-changing threats, agencies must be agile in their responses and up to date on the latest attack signatures and best defenses. By increasing knowledge and understanding of the cyber threat landscape, agencies can build proactive cyber defenses that allow them to adapt and respond appropriately to emerging cyber threats.
Learn more about how agencies can build proactive cyber defenses here.
