In three years, the JCDC has led many impactful projects to tackle sophisticated cyber threats - and they still plan to accomplish more in 2024.
In late August 2024, the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) celebrated their third anniversary in a blog by Clayton Romans, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Associate Director for the JCDC.
The JCDC was launched in 2021 with the goal of bringing together the cyber strengths of various federal agencies, state and local governments, and private companies to work toward common cyber defense goals. More specifically, the JCDC was tasked with making and carrying out nationwide cyber defense plans, sharing information to build a common understanding of cyber defense challenges and opportunities, coordinating efforts to reduce the effects of cyber intrusions, and supporting joint exercises to strengthen cyber defense operations.
Three years after its start, the organization has secured more than 40 collaboration channels and worked with over 340 industry partners. Most of the cybersecurity materials CISA has published in the last three years have included valuable input from JCDC partners. The JCDC has shared many resources for joint analysis, coordinated cyber defense plans for three major geopolitical conflicts, and worked together on a dozen other cyber defense plans.
In the blog, Romans calls attention to the impactful projects JCDC has worked on, like the Pipelines Cyber Defense Planning Effort, which led to the ONG Pipelines Reference Architecture and aimed to address challenges like the 2021 Colonial Pipeline incident. Besides the Pipelines effort, JCDC also shared important information about the Chinese state-sponsored Volt Typhoon cyber threat, which is helping guide the joint public-private response. To support an administrative initiative, JCDC also created a webpage for high-risk communities, offering free resources from both industry and government to help civil society organizations that are at greater risk of cyber attacks due to their identity or work. One of their most recent projects, led by JCDC.AI, is using an AI tabletop exercise to develop the first AI Security Incident Collaboration Playbook.
JCDC still is working to complete the rest of its priorities for 2024 - namely, defending against Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) operations, raising the cybersecurity baseline, and anticipating emerging technology and risks. While JCDC has its own share of challenges - Romans admits “we’re not homogenous, and it’s not always harmonious”, he also believes “it is the collective willingness to unify and operate with clarity of purpose that empowers JCDC to tackle today’s sophisticated cyber threat challenges.”