The National Security Agency published its 2022 Cybersecurity Year in Review today to share its mission focuses and demonstrate how it is producing cybersecurity outcomes for the nation.
This year’s report highlights NSA’s ability to scale cybersecurity solutions through strong partnerships, resulting in speed and agility.
“By protecting the U.S. Government’s most sensitive networks, we cascade solutions that help secure critical infrastructure, U.S. allies, and businesses and consumers around the world,” said Rob Joyce, NSA Cybersecurity Director. “Our efforts to protect those networks help protect yours.”
The Year in Review highlights NSA’s efforts, including:
- Collaborating with industry to harden billions of endpoints against active and ongoing nation-state threats.
- Disclosing dozens of zero-day vulnerabilities to vendors to remediate before nation-state actors exploit them.
- Publicly releasing cybersecurity guidance to protect against active adversary and cybercriminal threats and to harden systems.
- Securing standards for emerging technology through NSA’s Center for Cybersecurity Standards.
- Researching and delivering tools and technology advancements that protect the nation’s cyber ecosystem.
While the report includes as much unclassified information as possible about NSA’s cybersecurity mission focuses and efforts, much of the critical work NSA does to protect the nation cannot be publicly disclosed. Key takeaways from the report include:
- NSA’s partnerships are strong and growing.
- NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center (CCC) doubled its industry partnerships in the past year to more than 300 collaborative relationships. At the CCC, NSA combines SIGINT insights with those from industry partners to deliver intel-driven cybersecurity that protects the nation and U.S. allies.
- Through its Adversary Defeat team, NSA contributes to whole-of-government campaigns to counter malicious cyber activity from U.S. adversaries. This supports the National Defense Strategy.
- NSA collaborated with international partners on more than half of its public cybersecurity reports this year to enhance threat understanding and present top defensive actions to net defenders.
- NSA has collaborated with industry and U.S. Government partners to confront the quantum computing threat. Through the 2022 release of Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0 (CNSA Suite 2.0), NSA notified NSS owners, operators, and vendors of the future requirements for quantum-resistant algorithms for use in all NSS.
- NSA provides critical security and security infrastructure.
- NSA secures millions of devices around the world with encryption and manages the infrastructure to key those devices. That includes producing and distributing the keys, codes, and cryptographic materials that the U.S. Government and military use to secure weapons, satellites, communications, and many other systems in which national security critically relies.
- NSA bolsters cybersecurity education across the nation from kindergarten through college by funding programs such as GenCyber, the CodeBreaker Challenge, the NSA Cyber Exercise and the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity.