Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center William R. Evanina told a gathering of cybersecurity personnel that insider threats posed the greatest risk for Americans and U.S. National Security. “We had a horrible year last year in 2019, with indictments, arrests, convictions of clearance-holders as well as arrests, indictments, convictions of non-traditional collectors in the private sector — theft of intellectual property and trade secrets,” Evanina said at a meeting of the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. “It was not a good year for industry nor the government.”

Foreign nations like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are surveilling America’s critical infrastructure, incident command systems, and and stealing that imperative IC data. He added that insider threats are “constantly damaging our intellectual property and trade secrets,” but he believes people have grown “numb” to other countries’ attacks.

He also previewed a new counterintelligence strategy to be introduced on Monday. Evanina said the federal government would announce this strategy, authorized by the White House. This plan of action attempts to change U. S. perspective on who has the authority and responsibility for preventing enemies’ intelligence-collection efforts.

“From election security to foreign influence, economic security to critical infrastructure, we are going to look at everything and say it is no longer a government-just issue — it’s everyone’s issue,” he said.

Evanina and the federal government hope this new strategy will better prepare citizens to defend themselves against foreign adversaries.

This announcement followed Evanina’s recent testimony on security clearance reform progress before the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed-door hearing .