Hillicon Valley: Federal cyber agency reevaluating role in countering election disinformation | Senate panel advances Biden’s Commerce secretary pick | House Armed Services panel establishes new cybersecurity panel
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‘RUMOR CONTROL’ UNDER REVIEW: Brandon Wales, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said Wednesday that the agency’s involvement in countering election disinformation and misinformation was under review.
Wales described the decision made by the agency to stand up a “rumor control” page ahead of the 2020 election as “controversial,” and vowed to get “back to basics” and concentrate on cyber and physical security aspects of elections.
His comments came after former CISA Director Christopher Krebs was fired by former President Trump for both standing up the rumor control webpage and for CISA putting out a statement with other election officials describing the 2020 election as the “most secure in American history.”
RAIMONDO ADVANCES: President Biden’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department, Gina Raimondo, is heading to a Senate-wide vote after the Senate Commerce Committee advanced her in a broadly bipartisan 21-3 vote on Wednesday.
Raimondo, the current Democratic governor of Rhode Island, faced GOP opposition ahead of the committee vote, but ultimately just three Republicans — Ted Cruz (Texas), Marsha Blackburgn (Tenn.) and Rick Scott (Fla.) voted “no.”
Republicans had voiced concerns about comments Raimondo made about Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei. The Democrat had not clarified her stance on whether she would keep the Trump administration’s decision to put Huawei on the Commerce Department’s “entity list.”
NEW CYBER SUBCOMMITTEE: House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) on Wednesday announced the establishment of a new cybersecurity-focused subcommittee on the panel.
Langevin will chair the new subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems (CITI), which will branch off from the current subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities, which Langevin previously chaired.
The new subcommittee will have jurisdiction over issues including information technology, military science and technology programs, artificial intelligence programs, electronic warfare, computer software acquisition, and other defense-focused cybersecurity topics.
Read more about the new panel here.
SOLARWINDS SAGA CONTINUES: Hackers involved in the recent breach of IT group SolarWinds, one of the largest cyber incidents in U.S. history, likely had access to the company’s email system for months prior to discovery.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna said in an interview that hackers, which U.S. intelligence officials believe to be from Russia, accessed at least one of the company’s Office 365 accounts and compromised other accounts from there.
NEW LABELS: TikTok is launching new labels that warn users about content sharing unsubstantiated claims that don’t rise to the level of the platform removing the videos.
TikTok said in a post Wednesday it will use a series of prompts to caution users over videos that included “unverified content.”
The app will place a banner on videos warning it’s been flagged for unverified content, and again prompt users with a further warning if a user tries to share the flagged video.
Lighter click: Nice to see some honesty in Washington
An op-ed to chew on: A lofty but critical cybersecurity dream that must turn into reality
NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:
The rise of the GOP Poster’s Caucus (The Verge / Makena Kelly)
How new Amazon CEO Andy Jassy built an enterprise tech juggernaut (Protocol / Tom Krazit)
Robinhood’s C.E.O. Is in the Hot Seat (The New York Times / Nathaniel Popper, Kellen Browning and Erin Griffith)
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