Congress

The Defense Department is making the elevation of Cyber Command to a full unified combatant command a key priority.

The federal government has made “significant progress” in its efforts to shore up cybersecurity at civilian agencies after suffering numerous high-profile breaches in recent years, but there’s still room to do more, Department of Homeland Security Acting Deputy Undersecretary for Cybersecurity Jeanette Manfra told the House Homeland Security Committee on March 28.

NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers told Congress on Monday that the “cyber dimension” was a key difference in the Russian active measures used to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, compared to previously observed Russian activities in other elections.

When referring to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, the media often refers to Russian hacking, information warfare or influence operations. But the title of Monday’s hearing references “active measures.”

The House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities held a hearing highlighting the ways in which information warfare and propaganda campaigns – as well as effective methods for combating them – often involve an element of cyber operations.

Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone says he believes his contacts with a Russian-linked hacker who took credit for breaching the Democratic National Committee may have been obtained through a special warrant that allows the government to collect the communications of people suspected of being agents of a foreign nation.

The state Senate has passed dual bills aimed at preventing cyberattacks and terrorism at international business and commerce centers like New York City.

The four points of inquiry in the committee’s probe represent a bipartisan compromise, after Ranking Member Schiff openly criticized Nunes for his determination that intelligence would not show connections between Russia and Trump’s campaign.

Cyber continues to be a domain of warfare in which there are more questions than answers and in which defining the specific problems is as tricky as finding the solutions will prove to be.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the nation’s top spy chief, former GOP Sen. Dan Coats, said cyberwar will be one of the top threats facing the U.S. in the years to come, along with terrorism.