Cyber Officials Say Government Networks More Exposed to Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

Cybersecurity officials said zero-day vulnerability exploitation incidents have increased worldwide in the past months and must be addressed to prevent future damage.

Speaking at the ACT-IAC’s Imagine Nation ELC conference in Pennsylvania, Michael Duffy, associate director for capacity building at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s cybersecurity division, shared that zero-day exploits have directly affected the networks of federal governments worldwide. He also noted that CISA saw federal government-targeted ransomware and increased distributed denial-of-service attacks in the fiscal year 2023.

Darren Turner, chief of critical network defense at the National Security Agency’s cybersecurity directorate, said during the same event that the government and the private sector need to work together to combat zero-day threats. Specifically, he shared that private-public partnerships must focus on threat identification, analysis and mitigation, CyberScoop reported.

The officials’ comments are in line with the U.S. government’s ongoing efforts to protect networks from threats.

In late October, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that, among others, required the Department of Defense to look for artificial intelligence-enabled network security solutions. Under the EO, the secretaries of defense and homeland security were tasked to execute a pilot program identifying AI capabilities that can hunt, remediate and mitigate network threats.