‘You can’t separate the physical from the cyber,’ says New York’s first security and intelligence director
https://statescoop.com/new-york-colin-ahern-security-intelligence-director/
Publish Date: 2026-03-03 06:03:00
Source Domain: statescoop.com
In recognition of the many creative — and sometimes offline — modes of influence employed by the nation’s adversaries, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last week promoted Colin Ahern, formerly the state’s chief cyber officer, to serve as its first director of security and intelligence.
Ahern’s new role, according to the governor’s press materials, will “provide strategic direction and further unify the State’s security assets.” Hochul noted that “the threats we face are more complex and interconnected than ever before” and enjoined the state to be “aggressive, innovative and adaptive” as New York’s new intelligence director operates across all levels of government, the region’s critical infrastructure providers, academia and the private sector, addressing attacks online, but also taking on malign foreign influence campaigns, “hybrid warfare and other national security issues.”
“The emerging doctrine of our adversaries” — China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, — is an “all of the above, all the time approach to either holding specific targets at risk, i.e. obtaining access to them via cyber means, or the ability to conduct attacks on the space, for example via drones,” Ahern said in an interview. He explained that recent instances around the globe of hybrid warfare — a combination of tactics that can be as technical as a ransomware attack or as analog as political skullduggery — have illustrated the “blurring of the lines between cyber and physical attacks, and physical impact of cyberattacks.”
Colin Ahern (LinkedIn)
He pointed to Poland, where Russia has not only employed cyberattacks in an attempt to disable its power grid, but is funding so-called single-use agents to stimulate social unease and erode support for the war in Ukraine. Ahern said his role is intended primarily to advance the state’s economic development and workforce goals, and to “manage the risk that the changing…
