"NSA Funds Development, Release of D3FEND"
The federal research and development organization MITRE has released D3FEND, a framework for cybersecurity professionals to tailor defenses against specific cyber threats. The framework was funded by the National Security Agency (NSA) to strengthen the cybersecurity of National Security Systems, the Department of Defense, and the Defense Industrial Base. MITRE released the D3FEND technical knowledge base of defensive countermeasures for common offensive techniques as a complement to its ATT&CK framework, a knowledge base of cyber adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations. D3FEND establishes terminology of computer network defensive techniques and helps clarify previously unspecified relationships between defensive and offensive methods. In addition, this framework brings further attention to the complex interaction between computer network architectures, threats, and cyber countermeasures. The cybersecurity community is encouraged to promote the use of common language by cybersecurity professionals across government, industry, and academia. This article continues to discuss D3FEND and the importance of such frameworks.