13 novembre 2019 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
By: Andrew Eversden
The Department of Defense is working with a unnamed company to mitigate cybersecurity vulnerability discovered in a technology used by the Pentagon, the DoD's Deputy Chief CIO Michele Iversen said Nov. 12.
Without going into specific detail, Iversen said the department is working to remove the product.
“The company was compromised [and] had a big cybersecurity vulnerability,” said Iversen, speaking at Fifth Domain's annual CyberCon conference. “And we have seen bad things coming from those products, so we are looking at how to use our authorities ... [to] block those products or companies for national security systems.”
This highlights a broader issue facing the DoD: how to protect its supply chain.
To mitigate supply chain risk, Iversen said that she is working on a supply chain illumination tools. She said that these are useful because its made up of publicly available information that doesn't need any level of classification.
Specifically, she said she's working on a decision support tool where she can expose a “bare minimum set of publicly available supply chain information.”
“So when people are going to look and make their purchases, they have information available to them,” she said.
She said, ultimately, she wants the DoD CIO's office to offer that tool as a service.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is also starting to develop cybersecurity tools. NIST's Jon Boyens, acting deputy chief of the computer security division, said that his team at the standards agency is working on a supplier inter-dependency tool “to look at different suppliers and their criticality” to allow for government to be more effective in asking for capabilities during the procurement process.
“Industry is saying, ‘You know, we've invested in this but we're not getting any incentives' ... and so they're kind of looking for incentives for investing in technology,” said Boyens.
Iversen said that technology research and development also presents its own attack surface with which it needs to grapple. If the research and development was done in a foreign country, that presents a unique set of threats. For example, Iversen pointed to back-up software being placed into a nuclear command-and-control system.
“Maybe you just say anything where the R&D ... [is] done in those countries is just off limits,” Iversen said. “It just makes common sense. It's fixing stupid.”
11 juillet 2024 | International, Aérospatial, Terrestre, Sécurité
The European Sky Shield Initiative's focus procurement and other non-operational aspects have eased Swiss neutrality concerns, officials and analysts say.
30 novembre 2018 | International, Terrestre
By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — Missile-maker MBDA is banking on a new European Union project to help boost wider adoption of its Missile Moyenne Portée anti-tank weapon on the continent. The confidence by executives stems from last week's European Council approval of a Beyond-Line-of-Sight Land Battlefield Missile System. The project is one of 34 efforts under the union's new Permanent Structured Cooperation scheme, or PESCO. The framework is meant to unify military capabilities of the member nations with an eye toward establishing the EU as a military player on the world stage. The new missile project offers an glimpse into PESCO's nascent process for turning political ambitions into actual hardware made by national vendors. Such is the case here, says MBDA, which released a statement saying its MMP anti-tank weapon had been “endorsed” by the EU even though the official, one-paragraph project description makes no mention of a specific weapon. Company executives told Defense News that the MMP is what defense officials in France — which has the project lead together with Belgium and Cyprus — had in mind from the start when offering the project under an EU umbrella. The weapon, they argue, is the natural choice because it is already in service with French forces and because it is the sole wholly European option available. (MBDA is a joint venture of Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo.) A spokeswoman for the French delegation to the EU in Brussels did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The guided MMP, which boasts a range of 4 kilometers, can be fired by dismounted soldiers or from vehicles. Its competitors include the American-made Javelin and variants of the Spike, designed by Israel's Rafael. The Israelis market their offering through the Germany-based company Eurospike, and the missiles are produced in that country. But MBDA argues the “design authority” for both competitors lies outside of Europe, which means the joint venture would be ineligible for a role — and funding — under PESCO or its associated funding stream, the proposed €13 billion (U.S. $15 billion) European Defence Fund. It remains to be seen whether the apparent PESCO blessing can help propel the MMP weapon to greater popularity in European armies. There is already lower-hanging fruit included in the partnership with project co-sponsor Belgium: Brussels plans to buy a new fleet of armored combat vehicles from France's Nexter, a portion of which stands to be equipped with an anti-tank weapon. That's where EU funding support could come into play. Players of any PESCO project can get EU co-financing for the modification work required to make one weapon interoperable for several partner forces. On paper, the EU missile project has ambitious goals. The weapon eventually chosen — presumably the MMP — “is intended to be integrated on an extensive variety of platforms,” a PESCO project overview states. “The project includes joint training and formation aspects. A dedicated ‘users club' is envisioned develop a common European doctrine on BLOS firing.” Industry officials expect an initial kickoff meeting of the partner nations to hammer out a way ahead, though the timing is unclear. At that point, there could be a formal commitment to the MMP weapon. MBDA, for its part, is painting a purely altruistic picture of what's to come for the missile. “France is opening a collaborative approach for how to use it,” a spokesman told Defense News. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/11/29/with-nod-to-paris-mbda-claims-lead-on-eu-tank-killing-missile
6 janvier 2024 | International, Terrestre
Opinion: The conflicts of the 21st century require unprecedented global coordination as threats operate across geographies, borders, and digital platforms.