{"id":191711,"date":"2026-02-28T18:14:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T23:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/28\/strikes-on-iran-will-test-us-cyber-strategy-abroad-and-defenses-at-home\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T01:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T06:05:09","slug":"strikes-on-iran-will-test-us-cyber-strategy-abroad-and-defenses-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/28\/strikes-on-iran-will-test-us-cyber-strategy-abroad-and-defenses-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Strikes on Iran will test US cyber strategy abroad, and defenses at home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Strikes on Iran will test US cyber strategy abroad, and defenses at home<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.defenseone.com\/threats\/2026\/02\/strikes-iran-will-test-us-cyber-strategy-abroad-and-defenses-home\/411782\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-28 18:14:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.defenseone.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points.
\nCoordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are putting renewed focus on how the United States integrates offensive cyber capabilities into the battlespace \u2014 and how prepared federal agencies are for retaliation at home.Iran has shown a tendency to respond to overseas threats with cyber means, from defacing websites to spying on U.S. and allied targets. Tracking such actions and alerting the U.S. government and public is a job of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has been operating with sharply reduced staffing due to a funding lapse for its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.\u201cThis is a bad time for Washington\u2019s cyber agency to be operating with limited staff,\u201d said Annie Fixler, director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national security think tank.That funding lapse comes after Trump-administration moves shrank CISA\u2019s workforce by about one-third last year and degraded public-private collaboration mechanisms. This \u201climits the ability of the federal government to provide timely cyber threat information to the private sector,\u201d Fixler said.In the wake of the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes, American companies could see a \u201cbarrage\u201d of low-level attacks like website defacements and distributed denial-of-service attacks, said Fixler. \u201cIran might also see some limited success against targets that do not have proper cyber hygiene \u2014 exposed edge devices with default passwords, for example.\u201dOther cyber experts said the U.S. should prepare for a mix of distributed denial-of-service campaigns, ransomware and hack-and-leak operations meant to send a message.\u201cWhile it\u2019s not operating at the same technical level as China or Russia, Iranian-linked groups have carried out disruptive attacks against U.S. financial institutions, infrastructure providers and private sector companies,\u201d said Tom Pace, a former Marine intelligence specialist and CEO of NetRise, a cybersecurity supply chain firm.The conflict will likely see a surge in state-sponsored hacking activity, \u201cspecifically targeting operational technology and critical infrastructure through the exploitation of internet-facing industrial control systems and vulnerable [programmable logic controller] hardware,\u201d said Brian Harrell, a former CISA official.\u00a0\u201cThreat hunters should be working overtime right now. By combining disruptive attacks with psychological operations, Iran will seek to erode public trust in government institutions and project domestic strength during periods of heightened conflict,\u201d he said.Elisity CEO James Winebrenner echoed that advice. \u201cWe should be vigilant in protecting exposed [industrial controls systems] and expect heightened retaliatory activity in the coming days and weeks,\u201d he said. In late 2023, Iran-linked hackers digitally defaced U.S. water treatment equipment.Tehran may play up the effectiveness and scope of their cyberattacks, said Cynthia Kaiser, a former FBI cybersecurity deputy director who leads the Ransomware Research Center at Halcyon. Industry research has documented these theatrics.\u201cThey\u2019ll turn [an intrusion] into an information operation, and say, \u2018Look, we compromised this entire facility,\u2019 even though they compromised just a machine,\u201d Kaiser said.\u00a0Asked about the diminished DHS and CISA workforce, Kaiser said other national security elements across the government like the FBI and NSA are still able to track and respond to cyber threats in full. \u201cPeople marshal themselves together to focus on a big threat\u201d even if there are resource shortages, she said.\u00a0Matt Hayden, a former DHS infrastructure security official, said CISA would continue its standard threat-hunting procedures as if the government was fully operating. \u201cWhile there are operators that are working without pay, they are still working,\u201d he said. Hayden is now vice president of cyber and emerging threats at GDIT.Defense One has asked CISA and DHS for comment.The U.S. has likely deployed a powerful toolset of cyber and electronic operations against Iranian targets, said Charles Moore, a retired three-star general and former U.S. Cyber Command official who is now a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University\u2019s Institute of National Security.\u201cI would suspect that anything that Iran is using to communicate, anything they\u2019re using to keep situational awareness or visibility on the battle space, and any systems they\u2019re using to try to defend themselves, all those types of things \u2014 would be targets that would be of interest from a cyber perspective,\u201d Moore said.The U.S. and Israel are also likely intercepting communications to aid in its operations. \u201cIn general, signals intelligence of any type, is something the United States is very interested in and is very adept at gathering. And so I have no doubt that those types of efforts will continue,\u201d he said.Internet connectivity in Iran has also been heavily reduced. The exact cause of this decline is uncertain. While the U.S. or Israel may have played a role, Iran frequently restricts internet access during periods of unrest, such as anti-regime protests.In coming days, there may be public indications that Cyber Command played a role in U.S. components of the operation, said FDD\u2019s Fixler.Influence operations have played a role in the efforts. Israel notably hacked a major Iranian prayer app, aiming to fuel uprising against the regime. But its effectiveness may be limited, said Maggie Feldman-Piltch, CEO of Iceberg Holdings, a firm that helps private-sector entities prevent IP theft.\u00a0The infiltration of a prayer app with those messages is \u201ca wonderful example of not knowing your audience or understanding what happens when you don\u2019t,\u201d said Feldman-Piltch, who formerly led the digital and electronic portfolio at the Wilson Center.\u00a0A simple message finally calling for uprising ignores years of already documented protests against Iran that have resulted in civilian killings, she said.The U.S. and its allies will have to stay vigilant. The operation \u201chas destroyed Iran\u2019s conventional military options, making cyber operations the regime\u2019s sole remaining instrument of asymmetric retaliation,\u201d says a threat intelligence report sent to Defense One produced by cybersecurity firm Anomali. Iran-linked cyber units were \u201cactivated and retooling before the kinetic trigger,\u201d it adds.\u201cGeography provides no protection against a cyber-enabled adversary,\u201d said Tatyana Bolton, principal and head of Monument Advocacy\u2019s cybersecurity practice. \u201cIran possesses some of the most creative and dangerous cyber operators in the world, and with the current escalation, their incentive for restraint is significantly reduced.\u201d\u201cThey don\u2019t need to win a naval battle in the Gulf to hurt the U.S. \u2014 they can simply hold our power grids, water systems, and hospitals hostage from halfway around the world to force our hand at the negotiating table,\u201d Bolton said. \u201cWe must recognize that in 2026, the front line isn\u2019t just in the Middle East \u2014 it\u2019s in our own backyard.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Strikes on Iran will test US cyber strategy abroad, and defenses at home https:\/\/www.defenseone.com\/threats\/2026\/02\/strikes-iran-will-test-us-cyber-strategy-abroad-and-defenses-home\/411782\/ Publish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.defenseone.com\/media\/img\/cd\/2026\/02\/28\/Smoke_rises_over_the_2500\/open-graph.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-191711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191713,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191711\/revisions\/191713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}