Cybersecurity and cisas cybersecurity and infrastructure Security Acting director and we will have with us today i think hes joining a little bit later. Senator warner is the vice chair of the intelligence committee, representative will hurd whos the Ranking Member of the subcommittee on intelligence modernization and readiness and on the house intelligence committee, and representative underwood, from the subcommittee on cybersecurity, infrastructure , protections, and innovation. And i thought we would start where we just ended, which is we just heard from the cybersecurity and infrastructure cybersecurity agencys acting director from the department of Homeland Security. And the reason why we have an acting director is that the president fired the director , chris krebs. And maybe ill start with representative underwood and then turn to representative hurd, but to see what do you make of the firing of our lead cybersecurity officials. Well, thanks for having me. Hi, everybody. Really
Chief Information Security officer, meredith harper. Welcome, and over to you. Thanks very much, john. Its nice to see you, even virtually. So, today, you have everyones bio. So, i dont think i need to reintroduce our panel. But what theyre going to offer us, i think, is a way to look at the year, and back at the year in a context of cyber and health care, and give us a little bit different way to look at the latest efforts to get the vaccine out to the public. We actually have some news on this today, by the way. Well get to that a little later. Basically, the New York Times reported that Cyber Attacks related to cold storage of the vaccine have been going on since august. Its unclear whether this is about ransomware or something more sinister. But well get to that in a minute. What i thought wed do is divide the discussion basically into three parts. Were going to look at the broader issue of cyberthreats and attacks of the Health Care Sector as we sort of wrestle through a pandemic.
And great set of speakers today, along with acknowledging additional support. I am here for the next 30 minutes with brandon wales, the acting director of cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, for what i hope is going conversationnating about the election, about the covid pandemic, about the state of cybersecurity and infrastructure security and Critical Infrastructure across the country. Brandon, thanks so much for joining us today. Brandon garrett, thank you so much for the invitation. I am very happy to be here and talk about the important work our agency is doing. Is december 3. It is hard to believe that exactly a month ago on november 3 we were sitting down as a country to watch the first Election Results role in. Roll in. It feels like as a country we have lived about 25 years in the last month, and i would imagine for you, it has actually felt somehow longer than that. Byanted to start off today taking you actually back three thursday after the election. They put ou
Perilous time for the 2020 census. Troubling, there were reports indicating career officials at the Census Bureau warned the trump about significant problems that will delay the delivery of census data to late january or early february. After these reports became public, the director of the census, dr. Steven billingham, issued a Public Statement confirming problems were found, but provided no details. These developments were particularly troubling because they were not reported to our committee before we write about them in the press or before the census director made his Public Statement. Committee has jurisdiction, but nobody from the Trump Administration informed us about these problems or delays. For these reasons, the committee wrote a letter to the Census Bureau november 19. We asked for documents career officials prepared describing these data problems and the resulting delays. We also requested documents repaired for the department of commerce, including the commerce secretary
But is promising to keep up the fight and has more from washington. All eyes are going to be on the Republican Party leadership in the coming days, because really were seeing increased pressure on them to buck the president. On this we saw the big wigs of National Security officials from former republican administrations. Theyve all come out and said this is bad for democracy. Its many of them, not all of them. Obviously, its bad for democracy. Its bad for National Security and probably more important. Were seeing dozens upon dozens of other countries. C. E. O. s, the most influential republican donors come out and a lot are saying this has to and Republican Leadership needs to let the president know that its over. Joe biden has chosen several obama era officials to serve in his new administration. And so they blinken will be no one wanted to be secretary of state, and john kerry will take the lead on combating climate change. British drug company, astra zeneca, an Oxford University sa