To great ills, great remedies.
After a series of massive cyberattacks, the US government is turning to tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft to strengthen its body in the fight against hackers.
The White House on Tuesday unveiled a new working group made up of various industry players.
Led by the US Agency for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security (CISA), this committee aims to reduce the risk of computer attacks.
It must also, in the event of an incident, be able to provide a rapid and coordinated response between representatives of federal, local and private sector authorities.
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Objective number one: fight more effectively against "ransomware" attacks, malicious software that encrypts a target's data in order to extort money.
The new committee also plans to "develop a planning framework to coordinate incidents affecting remote (cloud) computing service providers," CISA director Jen Easterly said in a statement.
More and more serious threats
The United States has recently faced a wave of "ransomware" attacks.
The ruling against the US oil pipeline company Colonial Pipeline in May completely disrupted the supply of gasoline to motorists in parts of the East Coast for several days.
In early July, hackers also targeted the computer company Kaseya and, through its software, endangered the data of more than 1,000 companies that are customers of this company.
“The damage caused by cybercrime is costing the world billions of dollars, and ransomware has become a scourge,” Jen Easterly said at a cybersecurity conference Tuesday.
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- Jen Easterly (@CISAJen) August 5, 2021
“I want to focus on strengthening government collaboration with the private sector - businesses, universities, researchers, hackers,” she added.
Telecommunications operators AT&T, Lumen and Verizon, as well as more specialized cybersecurity companies Crowdstrike, FireEye Mandiant and Palo Alto Networks, are also part of the new team created by CISA.
And Jen Easterly is calling on any interested business to join the group.
At the end of July, the American president again expressed his concern at the intensification of cyber attacks.
"If we find ourselves at war, in a real armed war, with another great power, it will be because of a cyberattack," predicts Joe Biden.