It’s official – the US has a new agency to help combat cyber attacks.

Through a new memorandum, President Obama has established the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC), a brand new agency tasked with centralizing and organizing intelligence related to cyber threats. The CTIIC was first announced earlier this month by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco.

“Cyber threats are among the gravest national security dangers to the United States. Our citizens, our private sector, and our government are increasingly confronted by a range of actors attempting to do us harm through identity theft, cyber-enabled economic espionage, politically motivated cyber attacks, and other malicious activity,” says The White House. “As with our counterterrorism efforts, the United States Government is taking a “whole-of-government” approach to defend against and respond to these threats. In creating the CTIIC, the Administration is applying some of the hard-won lessons from our counterterrorism efforts to augment that “whole-of-government” approach by providing policymakers with a cross-agency view of foreign cyber threats, their severity, and potential attribution.”

The CTIIC will not be an intelligence-gathering agency, instead it’ll act in a supporting role (hence the “integration”).

“The CTIIC will not be an operational center,” says The White House. “It will not collect intelligence, manage incident response efforts, direct investigations, or replace other functions currently performed by existing departments, agencies, or government cyber centers. Instead, the CTIIC will support the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) in its network defense and incident response mission; the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF) in its mission to coordinate, integrate, and share information related to domestic cyber threat investigations; and U.S. Cyber Command in its mission to defend the nation from significant attacks in cyberspace. The CTIIC will provide these entities, as well as other departments and agencies, with intelligence needed to carry out their cybersecurity missions.”

The new agency will start off with a $35 million budget and about 50 people on staff, and will fall under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Image via dni.gov