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By Justin Katz
Dec 16, 2020
The National Security Council today announced it invoked an Obama-era presidential directive to create a special group responsible for managing the federal government s response to a breach in the networks of multiple agencies. A Cyber Unified Coordination Group (UCG) has been established to ensure continued unity of effort across the United States Government in response to a significant cyber incident, John Ullyot, an NSC spokesman, said via Twitter. The UCG process facilitates continuous and comprehensive coordination for whole-of-government efforts to identify, mitigate, remediate, and respond to this incident, the tweet continued, referring to agency networks that have been compromised by a vulnerability in SolarWinds Orion, an IT management software suite.
By Justin Katz
Dec 16, 2020
It remains unclear how many federal agencies have been breached in the SolarWinds compromise. Besides the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, Homeland Security and State and the National Institutes of Health, parts of the Pentagon have also been compromised, The New York Times reported.
Analysts said the agencies affected by the breach could face several problems as they work to contain any damage. Philip Reitinger, president and CEO of the Global Cyber Alliance, said agencies would likely face two major challenges. The first is that the software they have been directed to disable may be the same tool they would otherwise use to update and configure their systems.
NSC invokes 2016 directive to respond to SolarWinds hack
“For every agency already strapped with federal departures and transition planning, federal CIOs are going to be hard pressed to find enough personnel to address those issues, and they will now have to put all else aside to look through all their networks for signs of compromise, track CISA directives, and other address network vulnerabilities” said Tatyana Bolton, a senior fellow for cybersecurity at the R Street Institute.
“It is challenging to say the least,” she added.
Endnotes
By Justin Katz
The National Security Council today announced it invoked an Obama-era presidential directive to create a special group responsible for managing the federal government s response to a breach in the networks of multiple agencies. A Cyber Unified Coordination Group (UCG) has been established to ensure continued unity of effort across the United States Government in response to a significant cyber incident, John Ullyot, an NSC spokesman, said via Twitter. The UCG process facilitates continuous and comprehensive coordination for whole-of-government efforts to identify, mitigate, remediate, and respond to this incident, the tweet continued, referring to agency networks that have been compromised by a vulnerability in SolarWinds Orion, an IT management software suite.