Nation’s cyber chief has a warning
The man who oversees cybersecurity for the United States said he doesn’t want to be thought of as a person who frightens people, but he did just that in speaking to credit unions here, outlining cyber threats, especially from China, and calling on credit unions to sit down and hold a meeting as soon as possible.
Speaking to NAFCU’s Congressional Caucus here, William R. Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence Center, told credit unions, “This sounds like scary, bogey man stuff, and it is.”
Many of the threats and stolen data are not the result of sophisticated attacks, but instead are due to a particular “inability” by many Americans, according to Evanina. He strongly urged the credit union execs on hand to immediately sit down with their top staff–including HR––upon returning to their homes to gauge where they stand, conduct exercises and map out better plans to respond to data incidents that will occur.
Evanina wasted little time identifying where he and the Trump Administration believes the real threat is coming from. While North Korea, Russia and Iran are bad actors, it’s China that’s a significant threat to the U.S. and future economic prosperity, America’s top cyber cop said. And the federal government cannot respond to the threat on its own, he stressed.
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