FBI publishes new Cyber Strategy built on four pillars

The FBI has published a new Cyber Strategy setting out how it will defend US critical infrastructure in cyberspace. The document is organised around four pillars: investigating, disrupting and imposing costs on cyber adversaries; supporting victims; increasing impact through partnerships; and enhancing the bureau’s own cyber capabilities.

The strategy says state-sponsored actors are collecting intelligence, stealing proprietary data and pre-positioning access to disrupt critical infrastructure, while ransomware groups operate through an increasingly professionalised ecosystem of developers, affiliates and service providers. It points to AI-enabled tools and social engineering as factors compressing intrusion timelines and lowering the barrier to entry for less sophisticated attackers.

The FBI frames the plan as operationalising the President’s Cyber Strategy for America where its authorities apply, and as advancing its wider Enterprise Strategy. It commits to automated indicator sharing that moves threat intelligence from days to hours or minutes, and to deploying specialised Cyber Threat Teams within hours of significant incidents, supported by ICS coordinators in every field office and the Recovery Asset Team that freezes fraudulent transfers.