January 31, 2019 | International, C4ISR
By: Mark Pomerleau
Following a year of cyberspace strategizing, 2019 will be all about implementing rules and tools, according to the Department of Defense's top uniformed cyber policy adviser.
Appearing Jan. 29 before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Brig. Gen. Dennis Crall said the department knows where it needs to head following last year's DoD cyber strategy (the first in three years) and now is the time to show results.
“This is the year of outcomes and that's what we're focused on — delivering the capabilities and improvements that we've discussed for some time,” he told the committee, adding that the strategy process allowed them to take a look at some departmental gaps and get after them.
The strategy actually has actionable lines of effort and there are things they can do to measure progress, he said.
The document lays out five objectives and five areas of interest under its strategic approach. The five objectives include:
The five areas of interest under the guise of its strategic approach include building a more lethal joint force; competing and deterring in cyberspace; strengthening alliances and attracting new partners; reforming the department; and cultivating talent.
The strategy also notes DoD must take action in cyberspace during day-to-day competition to preserve U.S. military advantages and defend U.S. interests. The focus will be on nation states that can pose strategic threats to the United States, namely China and Russia.
“We will conduct cyberspace operations to collect intelligence and prepare military cyber capabilities to be used in the event of crisis or conflict,” the document says.
Dana Deasy, the department's chief information officer, told the same committee that the threat from Russia and China is so acute he is briefed weekly from U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency on them. This allows him to understand their offensive and defensive posture relative to the DoD.
“Suffice to say that these are very strong, capable adversaries, but at the same time we have some strong, capable abilities ourselves,” he said.
Cyber Command has now assembled a full force of cyberwarriors and received limited acquisition authority to start equipping them. However, there is much more work to be done.
In fact, aside from individual tools, the force is still in need of a training range where cyberwarriors can do individual and collective training, as well as mission rehearsal, similar to rifle ranges or national training centers in the physical world.
The Persistent Cyber Training Environment, being run by the Army for the joint force, will get after this; however, it is still in the prototype phase with a limited capability delivered to users.
Additionally, the force needs a large-scale command-and-control platform that will house tools, provide commanders global situational awareness of forces and enable forces to plug into operations from remote locations.
This is the goal of Unified Platform, which is also still in the prototype phase, though officials have said a limited product could be delivered as early as the spring.
https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2019/01/30/for-dod-cyber-2019-is-the-year-of-doing
October 18, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
The AUSA annual conference is where Army and defense leaders drop big news, and 2021 was no exception. Here are a few major headlines you shouldn't miss.
July 13, 2021 | International, Land
Both Hisar A+ and Hisar O+ have modular structures as part of their family concept, and are designed to be compatible with different platforms, fire control systems, and command-and-control infrastructure.
September 21, 2020 | International, C4ISR
Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — U.S. Central Command needs industry's help in designing a network infrastructure that provides improved secure information sharing with allies and partners, its top IT official said Sept. 17. Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey, director of command and control, communications, and computer systems at CENTCOM, said his team is working to establish a data-centric architecture that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to limit access to data based only on what a user needs. “What I have the team looking at is working in that transport agnostic, looking at a data-centric connection, and then how can we then use attributes to then release information to that person who is trying to access the data. And so that's where data centricity is at the end of the day trying to use machine learning and AI,” Rey said at the 2020 Intelligence and National Security Summit. “That's where we need help from industry.” Rey compared CENTCOM's need to the service provided by banks, where a person logs in with credentials, and then the bank reaches into its massive database, pulling out only the information specific to that person. CENTCOM, the largest combatant command, also has data and information sharing requirements with more than 50 nations, adding another degree of difficulty in developing a secure architecture where users can only access the necessary data. “We here at CENTCOM are going to work with partners, and we need to share our information with them,” Rey said. “We need that help in order to display from a single document with multiple security measures ... but release only that information on that document to that person by their credential.” The need Rey described is similar to an architecture developed by the U.S. intelligence community for its data access needs. That platform, known as IC GovCloud, enabled users to store data in one place and the community to implement security measures to limit personnel access to what they “need to know,” said Greg Smithberger, chief information officer at the National Security Agency and director of the agency's Capabilities Directorate. “We built the GovCloud from the ground up with this thought in mind so that with the data comes knowledge of where it came from and what the rules are in terms of how it needs to be handled and who has the need to know. And the systems are enforcing that need to know, so that if the humans make a mistake, there's a safety net there,” he said during the same webinar. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/09/18/centcom-looks-to-industry-for-data-centric-network/