During this time of stress on you and your agencies, we remain committed to doing whatever we can to protect our communities and the American people. Over the last few weeks, the FBI has observed both open source and law enforcement intelligence indicative of criminal and nation state affiliated groups who are targeting U.S. infrastructure and in some cases capitalizing on the COVID-19 pandemic in a variety of ways. As more of your people work remotely, your cyber and infrastructure vulnerabilities increase - bad actors would love to capitalize on those cyber vulnerabilities.
Our cyber team in Dallas has put together a brief Partner Awareness Message with suggestions and observations for you - and the Executives in your respective municipalities - to think about and utilize as you balance the need to expand access and protect your networks. In this video, FBI Cyber Supervisor Brett Leatherman briefly describes the need to be cautious and thoughtful as you expand network access. This document provides suggestions and resources we hope will be helpful as you have discussions about your cyber vulnerabilities with Executives in your respective AORs.
The Supervisors of our Cyber teams here in Dallas are SSA Rich Murray and SSA Brett Leatherman. Rich can be reached at rjmurray@fbi.gov and Brett can be reached at beleatherman@fbi.gov.
We hope this Partner Awareness Message is helpful. As always, we stand ready to help wherever we can as we navigate this crisis together.
Aaron G. Tapp
Assistant Special Agent in Charge
Dallas Division
National Security Branch
Partner Awareness Message Video
Partner Awareness Message Document
