Researchers Says Government Cyberthreat Sharing Too Secretive

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The top cybersecurity official at one of the country's foremost scientific institutions says the federal government is too secretive about the threat tips it shares. Virginia Tech is no stranger to hackers. Randy Marchany, the school's chief information security officer, says he assumes the attackers are already inside the networks. The university's attack space includes power generation networks, campus police databases, research files, student records and retail payment systems, among other sensitive digital operations, he said.

"I’m not the CISO of a university; I’m the CISO of a small town," said the nearly 40-year information security veteran at a cybersecurity conference. Marchany lamented what he says has been a growing trend during the last couple of years of the government restricting information about ongoing hack campaigns -- information that could help his staff identify the suspicious activity they already glimpse on systems. "The federal government now has this tendency to try to put a classified label on everything, and so I have to sometimes go to a dark room and have people hand me information" that I can only look at, he said.


Researchers Says Government Cyberthreat Sharing Too Secretive