President Trump has signed a national security presidential memorandum to combat transnational cyber enabled crime. It’ll allow federal law enforcement to partner with private technology companies. The federal National Coordination Center (NCC) ‘shall create, manage, and maintain’ a programme whereby companies ‘conduct Cyber Surveillance Operations and Cyber Effects Operations against foreign Cyber-Enabled Transnational Criminal Organizations (CE-TCOs), under the control and oversight of the Federal Government’. Companies taking part will be vetted, and meet standards of ‘technical proficiency, proven performance of cyber operations, facility security, personnel vetting, competence, reliability’.
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Kyle Hanslovan, CEO and co-founder of the platform Huntress, said: “Considering the rapidly accelerated sophistication of organised cybercrime and nation-state actors, close public and private collaboration is no longer an option. When you add the reality of AI-powered autonomous threats, the only viable solution is a stronger coalition of the willing, which we are eager to support.
“One key pillar to the success of this programme will be the appropriate use of hyperscalers for their breadth of intelligence data and die-hard security research labs like Huntress for their agility and operational depth to truly disrupt adversaries. Another key pillar will be the deconfliction process to ensure private industry doesn’t interfere with the value of long term persistent access operations which often lead to public arrests and geo-political negotiations.
“All-in-all, I’m proud to see the US Government push the boundaries when it comes to denying, degrading, and disrupting these measurable threats to democracy. If done correctly, I believe it will ultimately slow the illegal transfer of wealth and knowledge from western civilisation.”
Ben Bernstein, cybersecurity advisor at Huntress, added: “I’m all for expanding public-private cooperation because the government clearly can’t fight transnational cybercrime on its own, but I have concerns about how this actually plays out in the wild. When you look at the operational reality of green-lighting private offensive ops, you hit two massive roadblocks: collateral damage and bureaucratic lag. Threat actors don’t launch attacks from labeled servers in Moscow; they route traffic through compromised, innocent infrastructure, like a vulnerable router at an Ohio dental office or a hospital network. That makes it practically impossible to “strike back” without taking out innocent bystanders. Plus, adversary infrastructure is incredibly ephemeral, often burning down in a matter of hours. By the time a vetted firm submits a target, sits through the DOJ [Department of Justice] and DHS [Department of Homeland Security] deconfliction reviews, and finally gets a green light, they’ll be shooting at ghosts. Expecting government bureaucracy to move at the speed of modern ransomware operators is wildly optimistic.”
