Private sector companies had a key role in the U.S. government’s attribution of last year’s WannaCry ransomware epidemic to North Korea, said Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC) Director Tonya Ugoretz. She explained CTIIC learned of information about WannaCry that had been fed to the Department of Homeland Security by its private sector partners. This information allowed the U.S. intelligence community to move from low to moderate confidence that North Korea had conducted the campaign to high confidence. Ugoretz touted the case as an example of how applying a whole-of-government approach in coordination with the private sector can achieve results in the assessment of global cyberthreats. “The importance was having the relationships and the trust to go be able to go to different partners and say ‘This part of the community needs this piece of information that another part has,’” she said. CyberScoop.