Strengthening Cyber Defense for Underserved Sectors

Jen Easterly, former director of CISA and now a strategic advisory board member for Huntress, is focusing on boosting cyber resilience for small and medium enterprises. These organizations often face sophisticated attacks but lack the resources to defend themselves.

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During her CISA tenure, Easterly championed initiatives such as the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative and persistent threat hunting. These measures strengthened federal capabilities and deepened operational collaboration with the private sector, enabling rapid sharing of threat intelligence and faster mitigation of risks.

In light of the shift from espionage to disruptive attacks on critical infrastructure, Easterly urges all organizations, regardless of size, to prioritize resilience – preparing for, responding to, and recovering from incidents – and to demand secure-by-design technology from vendors.

“Every business, large and small, should consider themselves vulnerable. It’s all about resilience. How do you understand the threat, prepare for it, be able to respond to it and then recover so that you can mitigate and drive down risk,” she said.

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group at Black Hat USA 2025, Easterly also discussed:

• Using AI and machine learning as a force multiplier for cyber defense;
• Building trust-driven operational collaboration between government and industry;
• The shift from fragmented federal cyber management to centralized risk handling.

With decades of experience leading security efforts at the highest levels, Easterly helps address a problem she and Huntress have been tackling from different angles for years: how to protect the millions of organizations that fall below the cybersecurity poverty line.