At a glance.
- US Cybersecurity Trade Mission to visit South Korea and Japan.
- New director of National Counterintelligence and Security Center confirmed.
- White House hosts second open-source software summit.
US Cybersecurity Trade Mission to visit South Korea and Japan.
The US Department of Commerce announced that US Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves is scheduled to host a Cybersecurity Trade Mission to the Republic of Korea and Japan for fifteen US companies later this month. The mission’s goal is to strengthen the commercial connections to the two Indo-Pacific nations when it comes to protecting critical infrastructure and tech ecosystems from cyber threats. The trip is just the latest initiative in the White House’s continued efforts to support the free, open tech market in democratic nations in the Indo-Pacific region. US President Joe Biden recently hosted a Trilateral Summit with President Yoon of Korea and Prime Minister Kishida of Japan at Camp David, during which the leaders discussed regional security cooperation, particularly in the face of threats from neighboring countries in the Pacific.
New director of National Counterintelligence and Security Center confirmed.
Executive Gov reports that the US Senate has confirmed Michael Colin Casey as the new director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. Since 2016 Casey has served as the staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and he was a professional staff member in the House Armed Services Committee for nearly a decade. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Casey will bring “deep national security expertise and knowledge” to the role.
White House hosts second open-source software summit.
During a two-day summit focused on the security of open-source software, the White House called for stronger standards when it comes to inventorying product components. Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger said companies need to expand their use of software bills of materials, or SBOMs, and use those inventories to conduct vulnerability assessments. As the Wall Street Journal notes, this is the second open-source software summit, the first occurring in early 2022 after the discovery of the Log4j bug. Neuberger highlighted the advancements that have been made since that first meeting, like the Open Source Security Foundation’s development of digital software certificates to prevent the addition of malicious software to open-source programs. Attendees were a collection of government officials, technology companies, banks, and industry groups including acting National Cyber Director Kemba Walden, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) officials, and representatives from Citigroup, Microsoft, and Google. The Open Source Security Foundation convened the meeting, and general manager Omkhar Arasaratnam stated, “What we’ve seen from both the [strategy], as well as the CISA open-source road map that just came out today, is that the government is not just declaring outward, ‘thou shalt,’ but it’s also taking its own direction and saying in the federal government, ‘we shall.’”
