Biden Strikes Back: China Telecom Targeted in Cyber Showdown!

This is your Digital Dragon Watch: Weekly China Cyber Alert podcast. Hey there, I'm Ting, and welcome to Digital Dragon Watch, your weekly China cyber alert. Let's dive right in because the past few days have been anything but quiet. Just yesterday, the Biden administration took a significant step against China, retaliating for the sweeping hack of U.S. telecommunications companies earlier this year. The Commerce Department issued a notice to China Telecom Americas, alleging that its presence in American telecom networks and cloud services poses a national security risk[3]. This move is a direct response to the China-backed hacking group known as Salt Typhoon, which penetrated the networks of numerous companies including Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies. But that's not all. The House Homeland Security Committee Republicans recently introduced legislation to combat growing cyber threats from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) against our critical infrastructure. Representative Laurel Lee introduced the "Strengthening Cyber Resilience Against State-Sponsored Threats Act," which aims to establish an interagency task force led by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to address these threats[1]. CISA has been at the forefront of this battle, working to ensure U.S. critical infrastructure, government partners, and others have the information and guidance to defend themselves against Chinese State-Sponsored cybersecurity risks. They've confirmed that PRC state-sponsored cyber actors known as Volt Typhoon have compromised the IT environments of multiple critical infrastructure organizations, primarily in the Communications, Energy, Transportation Systems, and Water and Wastewater Systems Sectors[5]. So, what can you do to protect yourself? First, stay informed. CISA's CyberSentry Program provides persistent visibility into adversary activity targeting critical infrastructure networks and can drive urgent mitigation where activity is identified. Second, focus on defending against "living off the land" techniques used by cyber actors to maintain anonymity within IT infrastructure by abusing tools already present in the environment. In the words of CISA Director Easterly, who testified before the House Select Committee on the CCP, it's crucial to take proactive measures against these threats. And as Rep. Mike Waltz, designated by President-elect Trump to be national security adviser, put it, "We need to start going on offense and start imposing higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us." That's all for today, folks. Stay vigilant, and until next time, keep your digital dragons at bay. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.