A year-long effort to strengthen cybersecurity and modernize tech at U.S. intelligence agencies has led to policy standards for using AI to bolster cyber defenses, a shared repository of all apps that have undergone a cybersecurity review and more, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced Thursday.
An unclassified summary of cyber and tech modernization work under the first year of DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s stewardship states that the office has expanded the automation of threat hunting across intelligence community networks. (The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency conducts threat hunting across federal civilian agencies.)
The ODNI also has developed a zero-trust strategy that shifts “to a data-centric security model that protects information regardless of location or network,” according to the summary.
“Over the past year, we have taken meaningful steps to begin fulfilling that responsibility through the largest IC-wide technology investment and modernization effort in history,” Gabbard said in a news release. “President Trump’s Intelligence Community is moving faster and more decisively on cybersecurity modernization and investments in IT than ever before, delivering stronger defenses, greater efficiency, and real cost savings for the American people.”
It constitutes the first significant cybersecurity announcement out of the office under Gabbard and the second Trump administration.
While the year-long effort began before the recent release of a national cyber strategy, the ODNI initiatives reflect many of its goals, including better protection of federal networks, advancing artificial intelligence for defensive purposes and going on offense against cyber adversaries.
The ODNI directed its National Counterintelligence and Security Center “to proactively combat foreign intelligence actors seeking to engage in cyber-attacks against U.S. interests,” according to the summary.
The idea of an intelligence community repository of cybersecurity authorizations is to save both time and money, as it would allow agencies to capitalize on the testing of apps that other agencies have done without having to repeat them.
On AI, the ODNI is “developing the policy framework, governance, and standards necessary to accelerate AI adoption for cybersecurity and other critical technology,” the summary states.
“Protecting our nation’s most sensitive information from those who seek to exploit it, while making sure our intelligence professionals have the tools and access they need to do their jobs, is not optional. It is essential to our national security,” Gabbard said.
Gabbard’s appearance earlier this year during an FBI search of an elections office in Georgia has drawn congressional scrutiny, an appearance she has defended in part by citing her office’s role in coordinating and analyzing intelligence related to cybersecurity. Gabbard’s own personal cybersecurity practices prior to taking the job of DNI have also raised questions.
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