White House to Pilot AI for Cyber Resilience
The White House's Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) is advancing a strategy to bolster the use of AI for national cybersecurity defense. The administration aims to deploy AI without increasing the digital attack surface. As part of the initiative, the White House plans to pilot AI tools and “empower CISOs” in an effort to improve cross-agency cyber resilience.
- This initiative is part of a broader forthcoming national cyber strategy that will focus on the rapid and secure development of AI, including support for counter-AI efforts and establishing industry best practices. - The pilot program for AI tools is a collaborative effort with federal agencies to identify a "small set" of cyber-relevant uses for AI, with the goal of testing and potentially scaling successful applications across the government. - Acting Federal CISO Michael Duffy noted that this cyber-specific focus follows a "federal AI sprint" on general uses of the technology in government, which has already shown "positive progress." - The ONCD's strategy includes promoting U.S. AI cybersecurity standards and norms internationally through diplomatic efforts to create a global "clean technology stack." - A key goal is to use AI-enabled defensive tools to actively "detect, divert and deceive" threat actors, shifting from a passive defense posture. - The strategy emphasizes a "secure by design" approach, embedding security into AI development from the beginning in collaboration with the Office of Science and Technology Policy. - This initiative is part of a larger government effort, including a recent Treasury Department public-private partnership to strengthen AI cybersecurity and risk management in the financial sector. - The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is also actively involved, using its Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC.AI) to conduct tabletop exercises and develop an AI incident response playbook with industry partners.
