“China's cyber explosives are in place”
What Rob Joyce's warning about pre-positioned attackers means for ordinary networks — not just critical infrastructure
Rob Joyce spent decades at the National Security Agency, including as its Director of Cybersecurity. His warning is blunt: state-sponsored actors are no longer just stealing data — they are quietly establishing footholds inside U.S. networks so they can disrupt them later, at a moment of their choosing.
The clearest example is the campaign tracked as Volt Typhoon. Rather than breaking in to exfiltrate secrets, these actors burrow into routers, edge devices, and operational systems and wait — a posture U.S. agencies including CISA, the NSA, and the FBI have described as pre-positioning for potential disruption of critical services. Much of that access is gained through exactly the kind of unmanaged, end-of-life, and foreign-made hardware found in everyday networks.
Why it matters to you. Pre-positioning doesn't discriminate by size. The same neglected router that exposes a utility can expose a clinic, a factory, or a small business — and software-only security can't see a threat that lives beneath it, in the hardware itself. Owning and controlling your own trust, and taking devices off the public internet, removes the foothold these campaigns depend on.
Own your trust. Keep your peace of mind.
The new threat environment calls for a new Zero Trust model. We'd welcome the chance to show you how Faction puts you in control and secures your critical systems and assets rapidly with low cost and IT overhead.