Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

“Americans, your calls and texts can be monitored by Chinese spies,” a Washington Post opinion piece recently headlined. China has “growing cyber-sophistication and relentless ambition to undermine U.S.

Two undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea have been suddenly disrupted, according to local telecommunications companies, amid fresh warnings of possible Russian interference with global undersea infrastructure. Telecommunications company Telia Lithuania's monitoring systems could tell there was a cut due to the traffic disruption, and that the cause was likely physical damage to the cable itself. Another cable linking Finland and Germany was also disrupted, according to Cinia, the state-controlled Finnish company that runs the link.

Now is the time to evaluate and get serious about your digital security practices, experts say. President-elect Trump made several promises on the campaign trail to target people in marginalized communities, undermine the press, and seek retribution against his enemies. His administration could use several government surveillance and law enforcement tools to carry out those promises, including subpoenaing user data from major technology companies, purchasing data from third-party brokers, and tapping the intelligence community's own internal programs.

Securing our nation's cyber infrastructure is imperative. That is why all Department of Commerce networks have taken the first step to implement Internet routing security. Routing security ensures that Internet traffic reaches its intended target. Misconfigurations or manipulations of routing information can lead to significant degradation and loss of service. The United States Government is tackling concerns about routing security through a whole-of-government approach. The Department of Commerce is playing a leading role in these efforts:

The Federal Communications Commission received 2,734 applications from schools, libraries, and consortia of schools and libraries to participate in the Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program, representing $3.7 billion in requests to fund cybersecurity projects during the three-year program. During the application filing window—which ran from September 17, 2024 through November 1, 2024—the Pilot Program attracted applications from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, including schools and libraries in both rural and urban communities.

Hackers linked to Chinese intelligence used precision strikes to quietly compromise cellphone lines used by an array of senior national security and policy officials across the U.S. government in addition to politicians. This access allowed them to scoop up call logs, unencrypted texts and some audio from potentially thousands of Americans and others with whom they interacted.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Privacy and Data Protection Task Force announced a new Memorandum of Understanding with the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA).

Over the past couple of decades, our nation’s reliance on the internet and its associated infrastructures and technologies has significantly increased.

The Federal Communications Commission's Privacy and Data Protection Task Force announced additional partnerships between the agency’s Enforcement Bureau and state partners on privacy, data protection, and cybersecurity enforcement matters.

Cybersecurity experts say a recent Chinese intrusion into major U.S.