Nearly every Defense Industrial Base (DIB) partner knows of the National Security Agency (NSA) and its cybersecurity mission. The NSA.gov website describes that mission as such: “NSA Cybersecurity prevents and eradicates threats to U.S. national security systems with a focus on the DIB and the improvement of weapons security.”
NSA’s mission is important to everyone reading this. The agency is invaluable when it comes to understanding the threat posed in cyberspace by our adversaries; the information provided by NSA enables the development of cybersecurity tools and practices that can safeguard critical systems against even the most sophisticated nation state threats. Without the information NSA provides to the DIB, the defense supply chain’s vulnerability would be significantly higher, and the most critical cyberspace-based systems would be compromised much more often.
While the benefits of NSA’s cyber threat intelligence are simple to understand, how the agency develops that information is much more complex. NSA has unparalleled expertise and capabilities in developing intelligence regarding the threats posed and tradecraft employed by foreign adversaries. They do this all within their legally granted authorities. Executive Order 12333 and National Security Directive 6 grant the NSA the authority to process, analyze, produce, and disseminate signals intelligence (SIGINT) information for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. Their experts, within those legally granted authorities, develop amazing insight into the threat environment – and they leverage that insight every day to protect classified systems.
Protecting classified systems is very clear cut. What gets a bit murkier is the notion of a ‘national security system.’ You may not know it, but all systems critical to our national security do not reside inside well-protected secret facilities, nor do they necessarily reside on well-protected classified networks. Protecting classified systems, in comparison, is relatively easy. In a classified environment, NSA can share cyber threat and cybersecurity information more easily, as there is less concern about potentially revealing the sources and methods leveraged to develop the shared information.
But what happens when unclassified—but critical—systems need that information? NSA certainly wants to share intelligence it develops as broadly as possible to protect critical systems, but when the system is unclassified, sharing classified intelligence becomes vastly more challenging. If NSA divulges knowledge of a tool or technique from a foreign adversary with a private company, there is a valid concern that sharing could compromise the method by which the agency developed that information. Such a scenario might mean that a specific source is revealed to the adversary and that revelation may cause the shutdown of the source. Therefore, there is some extraordinarily complex and nuanced decision making required when it comes to deciding what NSA will share and how the agency shares it.
Improving public-private information sharing is one reason NSA stood up their new Cybersecurity Collaboration Center. For years, the agency has engaged with the private sector and worked tirelessly to develop capabilities and processes to share valuable information. During that process, NSA fully realized that the brain power, expertise, and technology that exists in the private sector are valuable resources – and that we need to find a way to put jet fuel on public-private partnerships, with specific focus on technology and intelligence sharing. That is where NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center lives and thrives.
The Cybersecurity Collaboration Center was established to interface directly with the private sector and to foster an environment for bi-directional information sharing. The Center exists to collaborate across the private sector and to leverage the unique strengths that both the private and public sectors bring to bear when it comes to protecting our most critical systems. This groundbreaking entity lives at the nexus of classified and unclassified systems – and their sole mission outcome is to make both entities as safe from exploitation as possible. If you would like to learn more about NSA’s mission – and additional specifics regarding their Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, visit nsa.gov.
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