ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Keeping power, water, and other essential services running requires planning for what happens when cyber defenses fail. On this episode of Cyber Focus, Frank Cilluffo speaks with Stephanie Crowe, head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, and Nick Andersen, acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), about how two close allies are preparing critical infrastructure to operate through compromise.
The conversation examines how governments and industry identify their most critical systems, turn shared intelligence into joint action, and prepare for attacks that cross sectors and borders. Crowe and Andersen also discuss how AI is changing cyber defense and what that means for infrastructure investment, workforce skills, and decisions in the boardroom.
Main Topics
- Operating through cyberattacks
- Protecting critical assets and dependencies
- China's infrastructure prepositioning
- CI Fortify and joint industry planning
- U.S.-Australia and Five Eyes cooperation
- AI defense and aging infrastructure
- AI's energy demands
- Workforce skills and boardroom decisions
Key Quotes
"You have to be able to fight through compromise now, which is a really different way of thinking about the cyber threat." — Stephanie Crowe
"We've come a long way from thinking about our number one cyber risk being data breaches and theft of information into a world where service disruption is now the thing that we have to really consider and plan in our cyber risk management." — Stephanie Crowe
"And just to be completely honest, Australia really bailed us out when we were in the middle of our shutdown… Australia led from the front." — Nick Andersen
"If the Congress decided that in the next budget that CISA needed to be quintupled in size, we're still not going to have enough resources to be able to meet every single area that we'd like to be able to stray into with our attention." — Nick Andersen
"We know that we're seeing exceedingly aggressive, well-orchestrated campaigns, in particular from entities like China, that are engaged in a significant way to preposition across our critical infrastructure to hold it at risk at a time and place of their choosing." — Nick Andersen
Links and Resources
- Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
- Australian Cyber Security Centre: Guidance and Resources
About the Guests:
Stephanie Crowe is Deputy Director-General of the Australian Signals Directorate and Head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre. She has held senior roles in signals intelligence and cybersecurity, leading efforts to strengthen Australia's cyber defenses, build threat intelligence capabilities, and support industry during major cyber incidents.
Nick Andersen is Acting Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), where he leads efforts to reduce risks to America's cyber and physical infrastructure. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran, he has held senior cybersecurity roles at the Department of Energy, the White House, and in the private sector.
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