WASHINGTON — The White House is relying on the private sector to be a critical ally in providing the US intelligence community with information on the latest breaches in cybersecurity, and is establishing a new $35 million center to coordinate information sharing, US officials said today.
“The private sector plays a more central role in spotting and responding to cyber attacks” than in other counterterrorism operations, said Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said during a speech at the Wilson Center in Washington on Tuesday.
As a result, the new Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIC) that Monaco unveiled during her speech will serve to coordinate cyber threat intelligence from across various government intelligence and law enforcement agencies — a capability Monaco said the federal government has not had up to this point.
The center CTIC will fall under the domain of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper.
Monaco said that the center will would be modeled after the National Counterterrorism Center (NTC), which is serves as the US government’s central hub for integrating and analyzing intelligence on terrorist threats collected from across the US government.
“There are structural, organizational, and cultural shifts that were made in the counterterrorism realm that also apply to cyber,” she said, and “we need to sync up our intelligence with our operations” when it comes to the cyber domain.
Prior to the establishment of the center, CTIC, there has been “no single government entity responsible for coordinating cyber analysis and supporting the work of operators and policy makers,” Monaco said.
Officials said earlier in the day that the new agency will soon kick off begin with about 50 staffers and have an initial budget of $35 million.
The new center “will not collect intelligence,” she insisted. “It will analyze information collected through other authorities” and concern itself with “integrating intelligence, providing all source analysis” of information provided by participating government agencies and the private sector.
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