The Central Intelligence Agency has introduced a sweeping reorganization, introducing a brand new Directorate devoted to cyber-espionage and establishing ten new cross-directorate ‘mission centers’.
The CIA’s new cyber-division will probably be known as the Directorate of Digital Innovation. It joins the 4 present Directorates: Support, Science and Technology, and Operations and Analysis, below the new group plan. Analysis is reverting to its conventional identify, having been renamed “Directorate of Intelligence” beforehand, whereas Operations used to be often called the “National Clandestine Service.”
Additionally, company director John Brennan introduced the institution of ten new “mission centers,” gathering CIA officers from throughout completely different Directorates to consider particular topics, areas or targets.
The 9/11 Commission criticized the CIA for not sharing intelligence that may have helped cease the 2001 assaults, and advisable various intelligence reforms. The new “mission centers” will put collectively operatives from the 5 Directorates to comply with pressing threats and “fill information gaps”, Brennan defined.
According to Brennan, the facilities will probably be organized by area – East Asia, for instance – or by sort of menace. The company already operates two such information-sharing facilities, devoted to counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism.
“I know there are seams right now, but what we’ve tried to do with these mission centers is cover the entire universe, regionally and functionally, and so something that’s going on in the world falls into one of those buckets,” he advised reporters.
Brennan cited the want to adapt to the “unprecedented pace and impact of technological advancements” as the justification for establishing a brand new digital directorate. Its mission, as Brennan defined, could be to counter international hackers attempting to penetrate US laptop techniques, in addition to assist American spies steal digital secrets and techniques round the world, saving the CIA loads of “time, resources and energy.”
Cyber threats had been the first sort of menace on the listing National Intelligence Director James Clapper introduced to Congress at the annual listening to at the finish of February. Clapper mentioned that cyber-attacks had been “increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication and severity of impact.”