DHS’s NCCIC operations moved temporarily after storms in Virginia
Several key Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity services were disrupted last week after the Northern Virginia building they’re housed in lost power during bad storms.
As first reported by CyberScoop, DHS’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), the 24/7 hub for monitoring cyberthreats across the government and critical infrastructure, has shifted operations to a backup location in Florida. The Arlington, Va., headquarters of NCCIC lost power last week after heavy rains.
The outage July 26 also took down two other programs under NCCIC’s National Cybersecurity Assessments and Technical Services (NCATS) program — Cyber Hygiene vulnerability scans and the Phishing Campaign Assessment — offline, and they remain down.
The Cyber Hygiene program remotely detects known vulnerabilities on internet-facing services. The Phishing Campaign Assessment program is part of a remote penetration testing service. Both programs are used by hundreds of customers across the country. Thirty-four states have received vulnerability scans through the Cyber Hygiene program, according to a DHS presentation given at the National Association of State Election Directors summer conference.
DHS Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications Jeanette Manfra told CyberScoop that the disruption to Cyber Hygiene is temporary, and that election systems will be the first to resume service once the program comes back online. Officials expect scans to resume Aug. 6.
Read more about the disruption on CyberScoop.
