Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Thanks so much, Ed. It’s great to be back at Fordham and ICCS. It’s also great to be sharing the stage with another former federal prosecutor – President Tetlow. I see great colleagues and friends in the audience from my previous tours at the White House and the government. It’s also great to be here in person for the first time since COVID began.

The FBI and Fordham University convene this forum for experts and leaders to discuss the complex cybersecurity challenges facing our country. And every year, those challenges get more and more pressing.

The last time I spoke here, I sat in a different seat in government; I was President Obama’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor. I was part of the team that briefed him every morning on the urgent threats facing our nation. And over those years, I spent more and more time during that morning briefing him on cyber threats – in particular, nation-state actors.

Since returning to the government and in my current seat as the Deputy Attorney General, I have been struck by an evolution: malicious cyber actors becoming more aggressive, more sophisticated, more belligerent and brazen – and an increased blurring of the line between state-sponsored cyberattacks and attacks by criminal groups.

At the Justice Department, keeping the American people safe from all threats, foreign and domestic, is an essential part of our mission. That is why, over the last year, we have been focusing on attacking cyber threats from every angle. We are taking a proactive approach to the threat. That approach has been informed by a Comprehensive Cyber Review conducted over the last year – the final report of which we are releasing today.

Building on the work of cyber experts in the Justice Department from across Administrations, our focus has been on increasing our capacity to disrupt and to respond to malicious cyber activity. And the report we release today reflects what we have learned over the last year, including the need to prioritize prevention, to ensure we are doing all we can to help victims, and above all else – to use all the tools at our disposal, working with partners here and around…