September 1, 2024 | International, Land
August 13, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Griffin joins Rocket Lab board following Pentagon exit
WASHINGTON — Just over a month after leaving the Pentagon, former Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin has joined the board of Rocket Lab, a small launch provider with increasing business with the U.S. government.
“Rocket Lab has established itself as the leader in dedicated small satellite launch, and it's a privilege to be joining the board at an exciting time for the business as it continues to increase launch cadence and expand into satellite manufacturing and operations,” Griffin said in a statement. “Space continues to be a highly contested domain crucial to our national security, and it's also a domain that presents significant commercial opportunity. The Rocket Lab team has a proven track record of executing on a clear vision to make space accessible to these diverse communities, and I look forward to supporting that vision.”
As the U.S. government has sought to leverage the growing small launch market in recent years, Rocket Lab has been there to pick up the contracts. The U.S. Air Force has awarded the company multiple launch contracts in recent years, and the U.S. Space Force is expected to launch a payload with the company in the coming months. At the same time, the National Reconnaissance Office launched its first payload from New Zealand on one of the company's Electron rockets earlier this year.
Although the company recently saw one of their launches fail to reach orbit, resulting in the loss of all commercial payloads onboard, a subsequent investigation has cleared Rocket Lab to resume launch activities and both NRO and the Space and Missile Systems Center have said they plan to continue doing business with the company.
Griffin's addition to the board certainly reflects the company's desire to continue pursuing national security small launch contracts.
“We are honored to welcome Mike to Rocket Lab's board of directors,” said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab's founder and chief executive. “He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from the civil, defense, and commercial space sectors that will be invaluable to our team as Rocket Lab continues to grow and meet the ever-evolving launch and space systems needs of the national security community and commercial sector alike.”
Griffin has a long history in the space arena. In 2005 he became the 11th NASA Administrator, a position he held until his resignation in 2008. During his tenure he initiated development of the agency's first commercial cargo delivery service to orbit.
More recently at head of R&E for the Department of Defense, Griffin was heavily involved in rethinking how the Pentagon approached the space domain. Griffin oversaw the establishment of the Space Development Agency in 2019, despite resistance from inside and outside of the Pentagon. Griffin was the agency's most high profile advocate, pushing for funding for the nascent organization from Congress and arguing that it should remain independent from the U.S. Air Force's traditional space acquisitions structure—at least initially.
Over the agency's first year and a half, he helped articulate a unique identity for the SDA in developing a new proliferated constellation in low Earth orbit, which will eventually be made up of hundreds of satellites. That National Defense Space Architecture is now expected to be a key component to two of DoD's most pressing issues: Hypersonic missile warning and Joint All Domain Command and Control.
During his tenure, Griffin was well known for his strong personality, which ruffled the feathers of both his colleagues at DoD and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Most notably, he clashed with former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson over the establishment of SDA, and the day before he announced his resignation the House Armed Services Committee recommended removing the Missile Defense Agency from under his control.
Griffin announced his resignation June 23, officially exiting the building July 10. He and his deputy, Lisa Porter—who resigned at the same time—have since opened up a new business together called Logiq Inc.
White House Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios was announced as Griffin's successor.
Aaron Mehta in Washington contributed to this story.
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September 30, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security
The DoD needs data-centric security, and here’s why
Drew Schnabel The U.S. Department of Defense is set to adopt an initial zero-trust architecture by the end of the calendar year, transitioning from a network-centric to a data-centric modern security model. Zero trust means an organization does not inherently trust any user. Trust must be continually assessed and granted in a granular fashion. This allows defense agencies to create policies that provide secure access for users connecting from any device, in any location. “This paradigm shift from a network-centric to a data-centric security model will affect every arena of our cyber domain, focusing first on how to protect our data and critical resources and then secondarily on our networks,” Vice Adm. Nancy Norton, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency and commander of the Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network, said at a virtual conference in July. How does the Pentagon's AI center plan to give the military a battlefield advantage? The Pentagon's artificial intelligence hub is working on tools to help in joint, all-domain operations as department leaders seek to use data to gain an advantage on the battlefield. Andrew Eversden To understand how the DoD will benefit from this new zero-trust security model, it's important to understand the department's current Joint Information Environment, or JIE, architecture; the initial intent of this model; and why the JIE can't fully protect modern networks, mobile users and advanced threats. Evolving DoD information security The JIE framework was developed to address inefficiencies of siloed architectures. The goal of developing a single security architecture, or SSA, with JIE was to collapse network security boundaries, reduce the department's external attack surface and standardize management operations. This framework helped ensure that defense agencies and mission partners could share information securely while reducing required maintenance and continued infrastructure expenditures. Previously, there were more than 190 agency security stacks located at the base/post/camp/station around the globe. Now, with the JIE architecture, there are just 22 security stacks centrally managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency to provide consistent security for users, regardless of location. “This paradigm shift from a network-centric to a data-centric security model will affect every arena of our cyber domain, focusing first on how to protect our data and critical resources and then secondarily on our networks,” Vice Adm. Nancy Norton, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency and commander of the Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network, said at a virtual conference in July. To understand how the DoD will benefit from this new zero-trust security model, it's important to understand the department's current Joint Information Environment, or JIE, architecture; the initial intent of this model; and why the JIE can't fully protect modern networks, mobile users and advanced threats. Evolving DoD information security The JIE framework was developed to address inefficiencies of siloed architectures. The goal of developing a single security architecture, or SSA, with JIE was to collapse network security boundaries, reduce the department's external attack surface and standardize management operations. This framework helped ensure that defense agencies and mission partners could share information securely while reducing required maintenance and continued infrastructure expenditures. Previously, there were more than 190 agency security stacks located at the base/post/camp/station around the globe. Now, with the JIE architecture, there are just 22 security stacks centrally managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency to provide consistent security for users, regardless of location. Initially, the JIE was an innovative concept that took the DoD from a highly fragmented architecture, in which each agency managed its own cybersecurity strategy, to an architecture in which there is a unified SSA. However, one of the early challenges identified for the JIE was managing cloud cybersecurity as part of the SSA. The components in the JIE — the Joint Regional Security Stacks family's internet access points and cloud access points — have traditionally focused on securing the network, rather than the data or user. As more DoD employees and contractors work remotely and data volumes increase, hardware cannot scale to support them. This has created ongoing concerns with performance, reliability, latency and cost. A cloud-first approach In response, the DoD leverages authorized solutions from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, and it references the Secure Cloud Computing Architecture guidance for a standard approach for boundary and application-level security for impact Level 4 and 5 data hosted in commercial cloud environments. The purpose of the SCCA is to provide a barrier of protection between the DoD Information Services Network and the commercial cloud services that the DoD uses while optimizing the cost-performance trade in cybersecurity. Defense agencies are now exploring enterprise-IT-as-a-service options to move to cloud, and reduce the need for constant updates and management of hardware. Through enterprise-IT-as-a-service models, defense agencies will be able to scale easily, reduce management costs and achieve a more competitive edge over their adversaries. Before the pandemic hit, defense agencies were already moving to support a more mobile workforce, where employees can access data from anywhere on any device. However, a cyber-centric military requires security to be more deeply ingrained into employee culture rather than physical protection of the perimeter. The next evolution to secure DISA and DoD networks is to embrace a secure access edge model with zero-trust capabilities. The SASE model moves essential security functions — such as web gateway firewalls, zero-trust capabilities, data loss prevention and secure network connectivity — all to the cloud. Then, federal employees have direct access to the cloud, while security is pushed as close to the user/data/device as possible. SP 800-27, zero-trust guidance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, provides a road map to migrate and deploy zero trust across the enterprise environment. This guidance outlines the necessary tenants of zero trust, including securing all communication regardless of network location, and granting access on a per-session basis. This creates a least-privilege-access model to ensure the right person, device and service have access to the data they need while protecting high-value assets. As the DoD transforms the JIE architecture to an as-a-service model with zero-trust capabilities, defense agencies will experience cost savings, greater scalability, better performance for the end user and war fighter, improved visibility, and control across DoD networks — and ultimately a stronger and more holistic cybersecurity capability moving forward. https://www.c4isrnet.com/opinion/2020/09/29/the-dod-needs-data-centric-security-and-heres-why/
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February 14, 2024 | International, Land
Pentagon launches six satellites to boost missile tracking capability
The satellites represent a portion of a broader Space Force plan to strengthen its missile warning and tracking capabilities against increasing threats.