Orthodox Jewish Woman at Helm of Preventing Russian Cyberattacks

Orthodox Jewish Woman at Helm of Preventing Russian Cyberattacks

 

Edited by: TJVNews.com

Just hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center issued a warning concerning a new kind of malware that was targeting Ukraine’s government ministries.

Microsoft then contacted the White House’s deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technologies. Her name is Chani (Anne) Neuberger, a Shomer Shabbos woman who hails from the predominantly Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park in Brooklyn. YWN reported that she attended a Bais Yaakov school there. She currently resides in Baltimore.

She is a graduate of Touro College in New York and Columbia Business School, and worked in the White House Fellows program, according to a report on the jmoreliving.com web site. The report also indicated that Neuberger is the founder of Sister to Sister, a nonprofit that operates in Orthodox communities around the country to serve single mothers who are not prepared to support a family. She and her husband, Yehuda Neuberger, a local attorney, have two children. They moved to the Baltimore area in 2005.

The Times of Israel reported that Neuberger’s parents, Rivki and Mendel Yitzhak Karfunkel, were among the Air France flight passengers rescued by Israeli commandos from Uganda’s Entebbe Airport in 1976. The flight was hijacked by members of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“My parents had American passports, but because my father wore a kippah they knew he was Jewish and decided to keep him, too,” she told the Forward in a 2018 interview. “A military operation brought my parents home. Sometimes, that’s the only option.”

In the same interview, Neuberger said, “Threats from those that want to cause us harm are real and not going away. We have a commitment to defending our nation in lawful ways. Our nation needs to remain vigilant when it comes to cybersecurity. The NSA makes critical contributions to protect the nation.”

Before taking up her latest post, Neuberger worked at the National Security Agency for over a decade and was tapped to lead its cybersecurity efforts last year. She helped establish the US Cyber Command and worked as chief risk officer, leading the agency’s election security efforts for the 2018 midterms, as was reported by the Times of Israel.

The New York Times reported that Neuberger asked Microsoft to share details of the malware’s code so that the Defense Department and other allies of Ukraine in Europe would be ready for it to attack.

Through Neuberger’s mediation, Microsoft began a global campaign to protect countries across the world from a suspected Russian cyberattack, according to a VIN report.

VIN also reported that Neuberger has been put at the helm of the Cybersecurity Directorate, a unit created last year that will “unify NSA’s foreign intelligence and cyberdefense missions and is charged with preventing and eradicating threats to National Security Systems and the Defense Industrial Base.”

Russia has long been launching cyberattacks against Western countries. Now, private companies like Microsoft are taking leading positions in fighting back.