Security News
The Federal Communications Commission has revoked China Unicom Americas' license, one of the world's largest mobile service providers, over "Serious national security concerns." China Unicom Americas is the largest foreign subsidiary of China Unicom, a Chinese state-owned telecom company.
President Joe Biden signed a national security memorandum on Wednesday to increase the security of national security systems part of critical US government networks used in military and intelligence activities when storing or transferring classified info. "Modernizing our cybersecurity defenses and protecting all federal networks is a priority for the Biden Administration, and this National Security Memorandum raises the bar for the cybersecurity of our most sensitive systems," the White House said.
Discussions on this topic took place during the Open Source Software Security Summit convened by the Biden administration on Thursday. Participants focused on three topics: preventing security defects and vulnerabilities in open source software, improving the process for finding security flaws and fixing them, and shrinking the time needed to deliver and deploy fixes.
China Telecom Americas is the largest foreign subsidiary of China Telecom Corporation, China's state-owned telecom company. "Indeed, the FCC's own review found that China Telecom Americas poses significant national security concerns due to its control and ownership by the Chinese government, including its susceptibility to complying with communist China's intelligence and cybersecurity laws that are contrary to the interests of the United States."
Zoom's ties to China are at the center of a US government investigation into the video-conferencing giant's $15bn plan to take over Five9, a California call-center-in-the-cloud. The FCC was reviewing an application [PDF] by Zoom and Five9 as part of the takeover bid until the regulator was asked by Justice Department official David Plotinsky to hold off until the committee had finished scrutinizing the overall deal.
Ultimately, the issue of national security hangs in the balance, and the best way to ensure we stay ahead of the curve is by using the cloud to "Digitally overmatch" our opponents and unlock the full potential of digital transformation. The cloud offers the ability to hyperscale in real time.
MITRE named Dana Jackson as senior vice president and general manager, MITRE National Security Sector, where he will serve as a catalyst for accelerating change in how our nation addresses its greatest national security challenges and drive solutions of national impact. He is responsible for the strategic growth and execution of MITRE's national security programs, including support to the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Intelligence Community, including leading the National Security Engineering Center.
US regulators on Friday listed Huawei among Chinese telecom gear firms deemed a threat to national security, signaling that a hoped for softening of relations is not in the cards. A roster of communications companies thought to pose "An unacceptable risk" to national security included Huawei Technologies; ZTE; Hytera Communications; Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, and Dahua Technology.
The Biden administration has urged users of Microsoft's Exchange mail and messaging server to ensure they have not fallen victim to the recently-detected "Hafnium" attack on Exchange Server that Microsoft says originated in China. Microsoft revealed the attack last week and released Exchange security updates.
The hack gave the attackers access to the computer networks of some 18,000 of SolarWinds's customers, including US government agencies such as the Homeland Security Department and State Department, American nuclear research labs, government contractors, IT companies and nongovernmental agencies around the world. The company outsourced much of its software engineering to cheaper programmers overseas, even though that typically increases the risk of security vulnerabilities.