Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity

👋 Hi from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) Legislative Summit in Chicago! Stop by CLTC's booth (4434) to learn how whole-of-state community cyber defense works. Our Public Interest Cybersecurity team has research and resources to support your state's efforts. Grace Menna, Sarah Powazek, Shannon Pierson #NCSLSummit #CyberCivilDefense #Take9

How do we best secure physical AI when it falls right between AI Safety, Cybersecurity, and Robotics? In a World Economic Forum article out today, our Executive Director, Ann C., and Kary Bheemaiah of Capgemini Invent unpack this security gap and how to fix it. Here are 3 actions they recommend for better security wherever physical AI is being procured or piloted: 1️⃣ Audit hardware & data: Inspect devices and map all outbound data destinations before granting network access. 2️⃣ Secure remote operators: Verify operator identity, location, and endpoint security for off-site control. 3️⃣ Extend NIST standards: Apply AI agent principles—like execution isolation and least privilege—directly to physical robots. Read the full article: https://lnkd.in/gZKZBAyZ #PhysicalAI #Robotics #Cybersecurity #AISecurity

🌆 Attending the National Conference of State Legislatures 2026 NCSL Legislative Summit in Chicago? Don’t miss the panel, “How States Can Fight Cybercrime,” on July 27, when CLTC’s Sarah Powazek, along with Representative Shelley Kloba of Washington and Senator Tracy Pennycuick of Pennsylvania, will discuss the methods bad actors are using to scam people out of billions of dollars and how states and localities can support the detection and prosecution of cybercriminals. 👉 Learn more and register for the summit: https://lnkd.in/gYJCAPrY #CyberCivilDefense #Take9 #CommunityCyberTalks

📣 CLTC is thrilled to announce our speakers for the Cyber Civil Defense Summit: East! 👉 Check out this amazing line-up of leaders from academia, government, the nonprofit sector, and beyond championing community cyber defense: https://lnkd.in/gTvwgTcm 📅 We are now just a month out, and this event is filling up fast! Join us in Union, New Jersey, at Kean University on August 20. Find the registration link in the comments👇 #CyberCivilDefense #Take9 UC Berkeley School of Information

How do we turn abstract AI policy into actionable workflows for critical incident reporting and internal use risk assessments? On June 30, our AI Security Initiative (AISI) convened over 40 experts from government, industry, and research to support the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) in implementing SB 53 (The Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act). This landmark 2025 law requires frontier AI developers to report critical incidents and internal use risk assessment summaries. Since March, our AISI team has been engaging with CalOES. This workshop served as a multi-stakeholder forum to dive deep into these two operational components. Read the key takeaways written by Non-Resident Fellow, Charlotte Yuan: https://lnkd.in/gT-pFM46 A huge thank you to AISI Program Director, Nada Madkour, PhD, to our brilliant moderators Alexandra Jumper and Bahrad Sokhansanj of the Institute for Law & AI (LawAI) and Deepika Raman, AISI Nonresident Research Fellow, and to presenters, Commander Matthew Sage of the California Cybersecurity Integration Center, Thomas Woodside of the Secure AI Project, Jean Jeptoo of the The AI Whistleblower Initiative (AIWI), Joe O'Brien and Sambhav Maheshwari of the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy (IAPS), and Caroline Jeanmaire of The Future Society. We are proud to partner with the broader ecosystem to help build a robust, practical blueprint for the future of AI governance. #AISecurity #AISI

👏👏👏 Great coverage of Arizona’s regional security operations centers (RSOC), two student-run cyber defense hubs that provide services like monitoring, threat analysis, incident advisory and cyber threat intelligence for the state’s smaller and resource‑constrained government entities. Bravo to the Arizona Department of Homeland Security for creating this force multiplier for community security and workforce development. And thanks to Keely Quinlan and StateScoop for spotlighting this inspiring work in Arizona and citing CLTC’s research in our whole-of-state cybersecurity guidebook! Read all about it: https://lnkd.in/g2Y5W4-P Curious about how other states have incorporated RSOCs into their cyber defense strategies? Find a link to CLTC’s “Save Money, Build Talent, and Defend Communities: A Whole-of-State Cybersecurity Guidebook” in comments 👇 #CyberCivilDefense #Take9

“Where will you show up in your commitment to the mission of others? What action will you take today?” - Jake Hammock, City of Seattle’s CISO The WA Nonprofit Cyber Forum is still reverberating. Check out our recap and highlight reel to learn about the cybersecurity gaps nonprofits face in Washington state and the resources and networks forming to support them. 📽️ Watch the highlights: https://lnkd.in/gfQb7fjt 🔗 Link to the full event recap in the comments City of Seattle, Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech), Joy Hollingsworth, William Kehoe, Sarah Powazek, Shannon Pierson, Nick Perematko

🎧 We’ve got a Friday podcast recommendation! As frontier AI models make it easier to exploit software vulnerabilities, smaller community organizations are left disproportionately exposed. And as these small orgs adopt new AI tools to keep pace, they can inadvertently extend their own attack surface without the budget or staff to defend it. But a growing human network of cyber defenders is working to close this gap. Sarah Powazek and Grace Menna of CLTC’s public interest cybersecurity team join StateScoop's Editor-in-Chief Colin Wood to explain how cyber defense programs are stepping up to counter this threat on the latest episode of their Priorities Podcast. 🎧 Listen: https://lnkd.in/eZsj2ijb 👀 Watch: https://lnkd.in/g6HfVx9D The Consortium of Cybersecurity Clinics #CyberCivilDefense #Take9 #CyberResilienceCorps

Community security is national security — and corporate security, too. In a new guest essay for The Cybersecurity Law Report, CLTC Senior Fellow Grace Menna argues that the private sector has both a stake in and an outsized ability to strengthen the "whole-of-state" movement, which pairs local cybersecurity talent with the under-resourced hospitals, schools, and municipalities that need it most, an ecosystem of 3,900 volunteers across 50 groups as of April 2026. Legal and compliance professionals have a particular role to play: pro bono review of volunteer agreements, advocacy for liability protections like Michigan's Civilian Cyber Corps Act, and funding for programs in underserved states. These are concrete, low-cost contributions that protect the infrastructure businesses themselves depend on. Read the full essay: https://lnkd.in/gnhNkUCY #CyberCivilDefense #Take9 Protect.ngo

🤔 How secure are the AI agents browsing the web on your behalf? As tools like Atlas, Claude, Comet, Copilot, and Gemini shift from simple chatbots to autonomous assistants, they introduce security risks that traditional tools simply cannot evaluate. To bridge this gap, a research team from the UC Berkeley School of Information's Master of Information and Cybersecurity (MICS) program created AgentWatch: a novel framework that systematically tests and scores browser-based AI agents by replicating both normal user behavior and adversarial attack scenarios. The framework evaluates agents across 5 categories: 🔷 Data disclosure control 🔶 Misunderstood prompts 🔷 Hallucination 🔶 Prompt Injection 🔷 Browser sandbox isolation Their groundbreaking work won the Spring 2026 Lily L. Chang MICS Capstone Award! 🏆 Congratulations to authors Anya-Clara S., Marisa Hall, Boaz Kaufman, Cynthia Austin, Rutika K., and Anagha Late 🎉 Check out the CLTC whitepaper: https://lnkd.in/gBX_McDY