DHS to host National Cybersecurity Summit

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will host a National Cybersecurity Summit on July 31, 2018 at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City, New York, the agency announced July 18. The DHS National Cybersecurity Summit will bring together a broad group of representatives from across government including officials from Department of Defense, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Energy, and Department of Treasury. They will be joined by academia and industry CEOs across sectors including telecom, financial, and energy to lay out a vision for a collective defense model to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure. Through panels, keynote addresses, and breakout sessions, the summit will serve as a launching point for a number of DHS initiatives to advance cybersecurity and critical infrastructure risk management.

“An interconnected world offers a myriad of benefits to American businesses and the public, but the innovations and conveniences of modern technology pose new and complex security challenges,” said Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. “With the majority of critical infrastructure owned and operated by the private sector, it is essential that we maintain strong partnerships between DHS and the private sector to underpin our collective defense against the evolving threats we all face. Because of our increasing hyper-connectivity, cybersecurity remains a shared responsibility; too big for anyone acting alone. This summit is another opportunity to gather our interagency and private partners and chart our shared path to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure against cyber threats and achieve a secure and resilient cyberspace.”

“There is an evident need for a coordinated, cross-sector, government-industry effort to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure from the growing cybersecurity threat,” said Christopher Krebs, under secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate. “DHS is leading the federal government’s efforts to champion that coordinated, integrated approach and this summit is a clear signal from government and industry alike that we need to move beyond simply sharing threat information – we need to advance efforts to manage risk in a prioritized manner.  The summit is just the start of that movement, as we sprint forward with a shared vision of the actions and respective expectations of how we will address risk together.”

Source: DHS