U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao announced the launch of this year’s Stop. Trains Can’t. public education campaign, which will run through November 8. This national $6.6 million safety campaign will run on radio, digital, and social media, educating drivers not to gamble with their lives at rail grade crossings.  The campaign will also target high-risk highway-railway crossings in Alabama, Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, and Texas.

The National Security Agency announced the official launch of the Center for Cybersecurity Standards (CCSS) in the Cybersecurity Directorate. This office will lead NSA’s Cybersecurity mission to engage with standards bodies to communicate security requirements and influence standards to secure our National Security Systems and provide support to the Defense Industrial Base (DIB).

McAfee and the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) released a new research study, MITRE ATT&CK as a Framework for Cloud Threat Investigation, developed by CLTC researchers. The report focuses on threat investigation in the cloud through the lens of the most widely adopted framework, MITRE ATT&CK.

Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad F. Wolf released the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Homeland Threat Assessment (HTA). This first-of-its-kind report synthesizes threat information across DHS including intelligence and operational components.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has chosen Cal State San Bernardino to be a leader of its core workforce development initiative, selecting it for a $10.5 million grant and naming the university’s Cybersecurity Center as the Community National Center for Cybersecurity Education. This prestigious designation illustrates CSUSB’s continued prominence as the premier institution of higher education for cybersecurity education and took effect Sept. 18, 2020. 

Emotet — a sophisticated Trojan commonly functioning as a downloader or dropper of other malware — resurged in July 2020, after a dormant period that began in February. Since August, CISA and MS-ISAC have seen a significant increase in malicious cyber actors targeting state and local governments with Emotet phishing emails. This increase has rendered Emotet one of the most prevalent ongoing threats.

The Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) has released an infographic mapping analysis of 44 of its Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (RVAs) conducted in Fiscal Year 2019 to the MITRE Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge (ATT&CK) Framework.

Shannon Polson, author of “The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience and Leadership in the Most Male Dominated Organization in the World” and the founder of The Grit Institute, gave the final keynote today at ICS West. Presented by the SIA Women in Security Forum, titled, “Leading From Any Seat: Stories from the Cockpit & Lessons from the Grit Project,” featured Polson discussing courage, resilience and leadership, using examples from her personal life as one of the first women to fly the Apache helicopter in the U.S. Army and ideas outlined in her book.

Digital Guardian announced Tim Bandos will become Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Bandos will bring more than 15 years of experience to the position including his five years as VP of Cybersecurity at Digital Guardian. Prior to joining Digital Guardian, Bandos was Director of Cybersecurity for Dupont where he was responsible for overseeing internal controls, incident response and threat intelligence.

Charles Burns, head of global security and engagement at Uber, opened day two of ISC West with a keynote titled, “How Uber is Scaling Enterprise Risk Management at the Speed of Global Transportation.”