{"id":229647,"date":"2026-06-10T15:41:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/10\/axonius-board-chairman-china-is-ruthless-cybersecurity-foe-meritalk\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T18:45:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:45:17","slug":"axonius-board-chairman-china-is-ruthless-cybersecurity-foe-meritalk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/10\/axonius-board-chairman-china-is-ruthless-cybersecurity-foe-meritalk\/","title":{"rendered":"Axonius Board Chairman: China Is \u2018Ruthless\u2019 Cybersecurity Foe \u2013 MeriTalk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Axonius Board Chairman: China Is \u2018Ruthless\u2019 Cybersecurity Foe \u2013 MeriTalk<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.meritalk.com\/articles\/axonius-board-chairman-china-is-ruthless-cybersecurity-foe\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-10 15:41:00<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. China is a \u201cruthless\u201d adversary that poses by far the greatest cybersecurity threat to the United States, according to Bob Skinner, chairman of the board of Axonius Federal Systems.
\nIn his closing keynote at the Axonius Adapt in Action conference in Washington, D.C., Skinner said China \u201cis the threat.\u201d
\n\u201cYes, we have Russia and Ukraine going on, and things going on in Iran and the Middle East, but strategically, China is the threat,\u201d he said.
\nSkinner, a former director of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), told the crowd that China is \u201cruthless in what they are trying to do.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m a firm believer that in all of your lifetimes, China will do something that will impact your daily life, whether that is disrupting your power at some point in time, whether that is disrupting trains or metro, [or] whether that\u2019s disrupting water supplies,\u201d he said. \u201cIt can be a mom-and-pop shop in the middle of nowhere, or it can be a water filtration plant in the middle of nowhere. It is going to happen, and we\u2019ve got to be prepared.\u201d
\nSkinner, who has more than 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, national defense, and digital modernization, was named to the Axonius board in April 2025 and became chairman in November.
\nHis comments about China echo numerous government warnings about Chinese cyber activities in recent years.\u00a0In April, a cybersecurity advisory from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said that China-linked groups are shifting tactics and using \u201ccovert networks\u201d to target home office routers, along with internet of things (IoT) and smart devices.
\nSkinner said the Chinese threat has evolved from focusing on ransomware and intellectual property to \u201cpre-positioning\u201d cyber assets to strike at a time and place of Beijing\u2019s choosing.
\nTo fight the growing threat, he said, U.S. defenders should focus \u2013 but not overly focus \u2013 on gaining visibility into rival networks. \u201cVisibility gets you into the dance, but it doesn\u2019t mean you are going to dance,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s not enough.\u201d
\nMost important, Skinner said, is tracking data flows and verifying identity.
\n\u201cIdentity is your center of gravity,\u201d he said. \u201cIn all of the discussions that I\u2019ve had with boards, and all discussions I\u2019ve had with companies, there hasn\u2019t been one that has a full accounting of identities \u2013 not one.\u201d
\nNotably, Skinner was skeptical of a cybersecurity best practice the government has strongly pushed: zero trust.
\n\u201cI think it\u2019s a big marketing scheme. That\u2019s what zero trust is,\u201d he said. \u00a0\u201cAt least until a few years ago \u2026 if you wanted money, you had to talk about zero trust.\u201d
\nSkinner said he preferred the term \u201ccontinuously validated trust, because if you truly have zero trust, you don\u2019t have an issue because there\u2019s trust going on everywhere.\u201d
\nIn the end, he concluded that cyber defenders should focus on the basics: critical thinking skills.
\n\u201cI think the number one issue within our education system is critical thinking and curiosity,\u201d he said. \u201cHow do we build within the curriculum critical thinking skills for the hard problems that we have and are looking to have? If you think today\u2019s environment is the most complex you\u2019ve ever seen, two or three years from now is going to be worse. It\u2019s going to be more complex with the technology.\u201d
\nAnswering his own question, Skinner said: \u201cInvest in people, invest in their ability to understand the technology, to understand the mission, to bring it all together, so that we can have a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Axonius Board Chairman: China Is \u2018Ruthless\u2019 Cybersecurity Foe \u2013 MeriTalk https:\/\/www.meritalk.com\/articles\/axonius-board-chairman-china-is-ruthless-cybersecurity-foe\/ Publish Date: 2026-06-10 15:41:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":229648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.meritalk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Lt.-Gen.-Robert-Skinner-min.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-229647","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\/229647"}],"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=229647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229649,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229647\/revisions\/229649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}