NSA creates cybersecurity directorate to unify offensive, defensive operations

The National Security Agency announced the creation Tuesday of a new directorate designed to harmonize the NSA’s offensive and defensive operations in cyberspace.

“NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate is a major organization that unifies NSA’s foreign intelligence and cyber defense missions and is charged with preventing and eradicating threats to National Security Systems and the Defense Industrial Base,” the agency said in a statement announcing its creation.

The new directorate will be led by Anne Neuberger, NSA’s first chief risk officer, and will become operational on Oct. 1, the agency said.

“This new approach to cybersecurity will better position NSA to collaborate with key partners across the U.S. government like U.S. Cyber Command, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It will also enable us to better share information with our customers so they are equipped to defend against malicious cyber activity,” the statement said.

Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of both the NSA and Cyber Command, said the new directorate “redefines” the intelligence agency’s mission in cyberspace.

“Over the past couple years, as we did a number of different reorganizations, one of the things I think we lost was that emphasis on cybersecurity,” he during the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University in New York City, The Wall Street Journal reported.

NSA, meanwhile, is hardly the only component of the U.S. intelligence community to rethink its approach to cybersecurity lately. Daniel R. Coats, President Trump’s director of national intelligence, announced the creation Friday of a new government position designed specifically to counter ongoing threats facing the U.S. electoral process, cyber and otherwise.

That position, the election threats executive, will involve coordinating and integrating “all election security activities, initiatives and programs” across the U.S. intelligence community, which includes the NSA and more than a dozen other agencies and offices.