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Within the last month, intelligence agencies, President Joe Biden, and large companies like Google have all issued the same warning — sounding alarms on the growing threat of cyber attacks coming from foreign governments.
"The biggest threat we face as a country from a counterintelligence perspective is from the People's Republic of China, and especially the Chinese Communist Party," Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Christopher Wray told 60 Minutes on Sunday.
"They are targeting our innovation, our trade secrets, and our intellectual property on a scale that is unprecedented in history," he added.
According to Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), the most malicious cyberattacks in the U.S. are coming from Iran, North Korea, Russia and China.
An official post, written by Google security engineer Billy Leonard, accused these nations of taking advantage of public interest in the war in Ukraine to spread malware.
"Government-backed actors from China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, as well as various unattributed groups, have used various Ukraine war-related themes in an effort to get targets to open malicious emails or click malicious links," Leonard wrote.
Last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published its 2022 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The report provides specific details on the threats each of these countries poses to domestic cybersecurity.
While cyber-attacks from Iran are mainly retaliatory or targeted against Israel, a U.S. ally, attacks coming from Russia are actively aimed at disabling critical infrastructure and manipulating communications organizations, according to the report.
North Korea mostly relies on espionage and cybercrimes, and is "well-positioned to conduct surprise cyber-attacks given its stealth and history of bold action," the report stated.
But the most alarming warning was issued about China.
The report calls China "the broadest, most active, and persistent cyber-espionage threat to U.S. Government and private sector networks," and argues that it is "almost certainly capable of launching cyber-attacks that would disrupt critical infrastructure services within the United States."
These reports have alarmed policymakers, who have responded with commitments to invest in a stronger, more resilient national infrastructure.
"We must work now to transform the United States into the most cyber-secure nation in the world," wrote Republican John Katko, ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, in a recent op-ed.
The domestic cybersecurity sector has seen rapid growth since President Biden first took office, with revenues totaling about $40.70 billion in 2018 jumping to nearly $58.65 billion in 2022, according to Statista, which projects that domestic revenues will increase to at least $78.30 billion by 2026.
A significant portion of this growth is expected to come through private-public contracts, with Biden's most recent budget plan requesting $10.9 billion in cybersecurity funding across civilian government agencies.
"From day one, my Administration has worked to strengthen our national cyber defenses," President Biden said in a statement on March 21, "mandating extensive cybersecurity measures for the Federal Government... and creating innovative public-private partnerships and initiatives to enhance cybersecurity across all our critical infrastructure."
Industry officials spoke in support of the government initiative.
"Strong public-private collaboration is key to proactively preventing or mitigating risk for the types of significant national cyber incidents we have seen proliferate over the last several years," Ryan Gillis, vice president of Cybersecurity, Strategy, and Global Policy from Palo Alto Networks, told Newsweek.
Palo Alto, one of the largest companies in the cybersecurity sector, announced a partnership with the White House earlier this year, in which they will collaborate to implement the Federal Zero Trust Strategy, which requires agencies to meet specific cybersecurity standards by the end of 2024.
The strategy is expected to drive federal government cybersecurity activities over the next two years and beyond, according to Palo Alto's website.
CrowdStrike, another leading cybersecurity company, announced a similar partnership in December with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
CISA selected the company to be a founding partner of its Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, a group designed to lead the development of cyber defense operations plans for federal, private, and state government stakeholders.
Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike's senior vice president of intelligence, said partnerships like these will be essential going forward in order to ensure the resiliency of domestic cybersecurity infrastructure.
"Lots of organizations have not yet invested in cybersecurity," Meyers told Newsweek, "but they need to in order to protect themselves, protect their customers, and protect their data."
"Relying on antivirus that was built and conceptualized in the late '90s isn't going to cut it with the threat actors that we are seeing today," he added. "We need to have advanced tools."
