David Mussington was invited to join the COVID-19 Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) League and Canada’s COVID-19 Cyber Defense Force.
The CTI League is an international group of cybersecurity individuals numbering close to 400 that includes senior-level professionals from notable companies like Microsoft and Amazon. Formed on March 25, the program brings together experts from more than 40 countries. Mussington, professor of the practice and director of the Center for Public Policy & Private Enterprise, will provide critical guidance to international leadership to help prevent ransomware and cyberattacks from affecting hospital operations, patients’ treatment and other essential services.
Through Canada’s COVID-19 Cyber Defense Force, Mussington will contribute to an open source initiative designed to give advice and incident response assistance to Canadian hospitals and health care organizations confronting cyber attacks by actors using COVID-19 messages to cover malware and spear phish exploits.
“It’s a real honor to be asked to collaborate on such a worthy cause,” said Mussington. “There has been an explosion of cyber activity targeting hospitals and healthcare since the COVID-19 situation worsened. It is great to see the cybersecurity community from around the world getting together to protect this critical infrastructure in all of our respective countries.”
The volunteer-based program involves top cybersecurity experts from around the world, and is affiliated with parallel public-private initiatives linking Western Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia.
“The sharing of information and assessments is likely to shorten risk response times and assist governments to protect the public from criminals seeking to take advantage of public fears and remote working situations,” Mussington said.
