I thought it was really enlightening.Īfter our conversation on Monday at the start of the week, throughout the week Sudhakar had several opportunities to testify on Capitol Hill, along with at least one of the hearings with Kevin Mandia and Brad Smith, and others through the week. If you missed that conversation, I’d encourage you to go back and watch the video. He also provided some specific examples about the way government could more effectively work with companies like SolarWinds when they’re subject to malicious cyber activity. So part one of this program took place at the beginning of this week on February 22nd when I had the opportunity to talk with SolarWinds’ new CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna, who provided some interesting insights into how this hack played out in SolarWinds, what steps they took upon learning about the hack, and what subsequent steps they’ve initiated to reflect lessons learned so far. And I lead the Defending Democratic Institutions Project. I’m the senior advisor here at the Center for Strategic and International Studies for homeland security. Welcome, everyone, to part two of our conversation about the SolarWinds hack and related events. And thank you also, as always, for your strong support for these important conversations. Hamre, thank you so much for that introduction and for providing the historical perspective on today’s conversation – reminding us how long we have been wrestling with this seemingly intractable issue. And we look forward to hearing all of these wonderful panelists. But we still have massive issues and problems in this country and we’re going to explore that today.Īnd so, Suzanne, thank you for leading this. And it’s gratifying to see how well we have advanced. And my boss was pretty unhappy that I did that, but I knew there was no way to mobilize a department as big and complicated as the Defense Department to take it seriously. Now, in retrospect at the time it was very naïve and innocent, but it was a serious issue for us.
I disclosed to the American public that we had a serious cyberattack. It was now 23 years ago when I was the deputy secretary of defense. But I just would like to make just preliminary remarks. I want to thank Suzanne Spaulding for creating this serious look into SolarWinds and what it says about America. And we are delighted that you are joining us for this very, very interesting conversation.
Lessons Learned from a Cyberattack: SolarWinds Conversation (Part 2 of 2)