Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last Friday said a department-led board will review cyber hacks of cloud computing environments with a particular focus on the recently disclosed intrusions of Microsoft [MSFT] email accounts belonging to U.S. government and other government agencies.
The Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) will make “actionable recommendations” for government, industry, and cloud service providers “to strengthen identity management and authentication in the cloud,” the Department of Homeland Security said. The board’s recommendations are voluntary.
“Organizations of all kinds are increasingly reliant on cloud computing to deliver services to the American people, which makes it imperative that we understand the vulnerabilities of that technology,” Mayorkas said in a statement. “Cloud security is the backbone of some of our most critical systems, from our e-commerce platforms to our communication tools to our critical infrastructure.”
In July, U.S. government officials reported about the intrusions into the Microsoft accounts that was allegedly carried out by a Chinese hacking group.
Rob Silvers, under secretary for policy at DHS, is the chair of the CSRB and Heather Adkins, vice president for security engineering at Google [GOOG], is the deputy chair. The board includes members from the federal government and private sector.