Integrating Intelligence: CTIIC's Role in Defending Critical Infrastructure with Laura Galante and Lauren Goldman

In this episode of Cyber Focus, host Frank Cilluffo sits down with Laura Galante, Director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC), and Lauren Goldman, head of Analysis and Analytic Integration at CTIIC. They discuss CTIIC’s evolving role in integrating intelligence across agencies and sectors, its initiatives to bolster critical infrastructure resilience, and its approach to public-private partnerships. The conversation also explores threats from adversarial nation-states like China, operational collaboration for cybersecurity, and the integration of intelligence to address ransomware trends globally.

Main Topics Covered:

• The mission and evolution of CTIIC in the intelligence community.
• Public-private partnerships and their role in cybersecurity.
• Nation-state threats, including Chinese cyber campaigns and pre-positioning strategies.
• Ransomware trends and the impact on sectors like healthcare, education, and manufacturing.
• Operational collaboration models for critical infrastructure resilience.
• Intelligence sharing beyond the Beltway and efforts to support global allies.

Key Quotes:

"Inherent in the cyber threat and in the cyber domain is you’ve got most of the infrastructure owned by private entities." – Laura Galante

"One of the things we found was that there’s a lot of really great intelligence production that’s happening at the secret level, and it is not necessarily always getting out to the edge." – Lauren Goldman

"You have a lot of folks who don't think of themselves as a cyber person who are there on the front line securing a more and more digitized set of... devices." – Laura Galante

"Each one of these typhoons on their own is a really bad storm. Collectively, dare I say, it’s almost a perfect storm." – Frank Cilluffo

"Everything we do is about tailoring the intelligence so that it is consumable, so that people get it and they feel armed to make the decisions they need to make." – Lauren Goldman

Relevant Links:

The Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center

Cybersecurity Collaboration Center

International Counter Ransomware Initiative

Guest Bios:

• Laura Galante served as the Director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC) under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Formerly with Mandiant, Galante specializes in integrating intelligence to support national security decision-making.
• Lauren Goldman is the Head of Analysis and Analytic Integration at CTIIC, with past roles at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center, focusing on intelligence integration and critical infrastructure resilience.