Senior Biden administration officials met Silicon Valley executives on Monday to ask for more help in tackling hackers and ransomware attacks.
It comes amid fresh warnings that Russian state hackers, who caused chaos with the SolarWinds attack, have not eased up in their campaign of cyberespionage.
And it emerged that global ransomware attacks increased by 151 percent in the first half of 2021 compared with last year, according to Canada's signals intelligence agency.
Against that backdrop, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other officials met executives from 13 companies, including Google, at the Four Seasons hotel in Palo Alto, California according to Politico.
'This is about taking a spirit of partnership and moving into actual operational collaboration,' Mayorkas told the news outlet.
He said the aim was to 'increase the cyber hygiene not only of the government' but also companies with a wide range of expertise and resources.
Participants included networking vendor Juniper Networks and security firm Mandiant.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other officials reportedly met executives from 13 companies, including Google, at the Four Seasons hotel in Palo Alto, to discuss how to better tackle the threat from hackers
Google was among the Silicon Valley companies represented at the meeting
At the same time it emerged that global ransomware attacks increased by 151 percent in the first half of 2021 compared with last year, according to Canada's signals intelligence agency
At the same time, Mandiant issued a report warning that hackers linked to Moscow's SVR foreign intelligence agency continued to steal data 'relevant to Russian interests.'
'The threat actors continue to innovate and identify new techniques and tradecraft to maintain persistent access to victim environments, hinder detection, and confuse attribution efforts,' it said.
Federal agencies already work with some companies, such as Microsoft, that warn when they spot cyberattacks and help to take them offline.
But the Palo Alto meeting was billed as a chance to further build relations at a time when such attacks are surging and to offer an alternative line of defense that does not rely on the goodwill of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom Biden is expected to raise cybersecurity in a video conference on Tuesday.
A DHS official added that the meeting was designed to 'get to the point where government and the private sector are working day in and day out on understanding, analyzing, and then mitigating the most urgent threats that we're seeing.'
It comes as Canada warned of the growing threat this year.
The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), citing attacks on North American health facilities and a U.S. pipeline, said the scale and scope of ransomware operators represented security and economic risks to Canada and its allies.
'Ransomware operators will likely become increasingly aggressive in their targeting, including against critical infrastructure,' said a report issued by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.
In a sign of how the private sector can help, on Monday Microsoft said it had disrupted the cyber-spying of a Chinese hacking group.
It said it had obtained a court warrant allowing it to seize 42 domains used by a state-backed group known as Nickel.
Tom Burt, Microsoft vice president of customer security and trust, wrote in a blog post: 'Obtaining control of the malicious websites and redirecting traffic from those sites to Microsoft’s secure servers will help us protect existing and future victims while learning more about Nickel’s activities.
'Our disruption will not prevent Nickel from continuing other hacking activities, but we do believe we have removed a key piece of the infrastructure the group has been relying on for this latest wave of attacks.'
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