CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative Helped Mitigate Log4j, Experts Testify

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative played a key role in mitigating the impact of the Log4j vulnerability, cybersecurity experts said at a congressional hearing.

Established in August 2021, JCDC is an effort to create whole-of-nation cybersecurity plans among stakeholders in the private sector, federal government and state, local, tribal and territorial governments.

JCDC’s objectives include sharing insights into cybersecurity challenges, coordinating stakeholders to reduce the impact of breaches and holding joint cybersecurity exercises, CISA said in a press release.

Brad Arkin, senior vice president and chief security and trust officer at Cisco Systems, told Congress that JCDC guided companies on how best to spread out their cybersecurity resources as developers worked to patch the Log4j flaw, Nextgov reported Thursday. 

JCDC’s guidance allowed Cisco to rapidly determine which of its products and services were affected by the vulnerability, Arkin told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. He added that JCDC’s support allowed Cisco to roll out fixes within 10 days.

Jen Miller-Osborn, deputy director of threat intelligence at Palo Alto Networks, said that the Log4j response demonstrates the long-term benefits of having a collaborative channel like JCDC, which he said could serve as a “clearinghouse” for guidance for smaller businesses.

Log4j is an open-source Apache logging framework used in a wide range of applications, including enterprise software and cloud services. 

According to cybersecurity analysts, the flaw affected Apple’s iCloud service, the Steam digital store, China web giant Baidu and the Java Edition of Minecraft.