Cyber Security News: Secretary Of State Rex Tillerson Closes Cyber Office At State Department

In an effort to reorganize the United States State Department, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will shut down an office that coordinates cyber and technology issues with other nations, Bloomberg reported.

The Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues, created in 2011 under President Barack Obama, will cease existence as a standalone entity and will instead operate as a part of the State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.

Read: U.S. Cyber Security News: White House Chief Information Security Officer Reportedly Removed From Position

Instead of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues reporting directly to the secretary of state and allowing the head of the department to address issues directly, they will now go through the agency’s chain of command before an issue is elevated to the highest levels.

The elimination of the office comes as part of a larger, department-wide reorganization that Tillerson has pushed for. The Secretary of State appointed by President Donald Trump has pushed to get rid of positions he believes overlap with others and has signed on to the President’s plan to slash the State Department’s budget by nearly 30 percent.

The Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues was responsible for establishing the 2015 cyber accord between the U.S. and China. The agreement helped curb Chinese hacking attempts on corporate targets and reduced the country’s espionage efforts against the U.S.

Robert Knake, a senior fellow for cybersecurity at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and former director of cybersecurity policy at the National Security Council under the Obama administration, told Bloomberg the reorganization is “taking an issue that’s preeminent and putting it inside a backwater within the State Department.”

Read: Trump Cybersecurity Executive Order Calls For Review Of Security Of Government Agencies, Infrastructure

The current cyber coordinator for the State Department, Christopher Painter, is leaving the position by the end of the month according to a report from Politico. Painter seemingly confirmed the report on Twitter.

Painter’s departure and the decision to fold his office into another bureau at the State Department comes at an odd time, as the U.S. has been subject to an apparent effort by the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. There have also been a number of global cyberattacks that have affected businesses and organizations inside the U.S. and around the world.

The Trump administration has place little emphasis on cybersecurity despite its growing impact on all aspects of daily operations for businesses, governments and individuals.

President Trump did sign an executive order on cybersecurity earlier this year, which called for increased scrutiny on cyber defense for critical infrastructure and a review of security practices of government agencies, but results from the order have yet to be seen.

The reorganization from Secretary of State Tillerson is not the first instance of the Trump administration minimizing positions that focus on cybersecurity. At the start of his administration, Trump removed the chief information security officer at the White House with little notice and no immediate plan to fill the position.