New York City To Launch America's First Cyberdefense Center

Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels

In the United States, and especially in New York City, New York, infrastructure cyberattacks are becoming an increasingly big problem.

Whether it was the infamous computer system outage in the Atlanta City Government in 2018, or Baltimore's 911 emergency system disruption (also in 2018), or even the temporary and offline takedown of Colorado’s Department of Transportation (in 2017-2018), cyberattacks are costing taxpayers over $17 million.

In New York City, there are plans to fully open a facility to help fend off these sorts of attacks. Basically, New York City has launched a Cyber Critical Services and Infrastructure (CCSI) operations center. The CCSI was publically launched in partnership with the New York City Cyber Command and Global Cyber Alliance.

You can watch the video below to understand infrastructure cyberattacks in better detail:

Explaining The CCSI

The initiative will have an eclectic mix of private sector and public sector organizations. This means that cyber professionals from every sector are really important to have, especially if employers and customers need to be protected from major cyber-attacks.

Thus, for a little over 1 year, the CCSI quietly assembled. It spans individuals across 35 organizations and across 17 sectors.

These include experts include (but are not limited to):

• Amazon
• IBM
• The Federal Reserve Bank
• The New York Police Department
• Various healthcare providers

If a cyberattack were to occur and suddenly hit New York City, the initiative will have people ideally work together to overcome such situations and conjure up a unified city response. Each individual sector will especially have to work together, especially since in this day and age, as very few people do. Now is a great time to made those dialogues happen.

It seems that the CCSI has made itself publically known in recent times. They may still need help to make sure things super smoothly. If you happen to be a New York City-based cybersecurity expert who wants to help CCSI, you can read more about their program here.

Photo by Mati Mango from Pexels

The New York City Cyber Command

As mentioned earlier, the CCSI was publically launched in partnership with the New York City Cyber Command and Global Cyber Alliance.

The New York City Cyber Command is a centralized organization that leads the City's cyber defense efforts. They work across hundreds of agencies and offices to prevent, detect, respond, and recover from impending or potential cyber threats.

They offer the latest technologies, public-private partnerships, and some robust training and exercises for City staff.

Recently, they issued the NYC Secure app that will alert mobile devices against unwanted threats over unsecured Wi-Fi networks and provide alternative recommendations to address those situations. You can find this app on Google Play or the App Store.

Screenshot from the NYC Cyber Command website

The Global Cyber Alliance

The Global Cyber Alliance develops programs and projects designed to address many critical challenges associated with the cyber risk landscape. They may analyze attacks on IoT devices and even produce free tools and resources to help reduce cyber risk and improve one's email security, thus making the internet safe.

Having a trustworthy internet is pretty important, especially if people are misusing it.

Explaining The CCSI in More Detail

Back in 2017, many politicians floated around and flirted with such an idea, but imagined it to be a physical center. The CCSI will be strictly virtually at the moment, given ongoing and recurring world events.

However, there will be plans to add more of these cyber defense centers, particularly in places like Atlanta and Baltimore. As earlier stated, both Atlanta and Baltimore have had ransomware attacks in recent years, and the cities are paying the price, by having to recover losses over a long period of time.

On the upside, at least New York City will have such a center to keep themselves busy. If anything, New York City, New York, will lead the nation on how to develop such an initiative. Only time will tell.

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