Trump’s cyber czar pick grilled over CISA cuts: ‘If we have a cyber 9/11, you’re the guy’
Sean Cairncross, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as national cyber director, doubled down on taking offensive cyber actions against foreign adversaries during a Senate homeland security committee nomination hearing on Thursday, and refused to condemn the president’s proposed cuts to the main US cyber defense agency.
Cairncross is a former White House advisor from Trump’s first term and a former Republican National Committee official. Despite limited cybersecurity experience, he has been widely endorsed by several former national security advisors [PDF] and private-sector security executives.
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
Signalgate | State surveillance