Defense

Moran Calls Cyber ‘Soft Underbelly’ Of US Power At Security Center Debut

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“The United States has built the most powerful military the world has ever seen, but we are not invincible. Information technology is a both an essential enabler of American power, but it is also our Achilles heel. And that’s why this project is so important,” said Virginia Congressman Jim Moran, referring to a new cybersecurity research center opened by L-3 and Virginia Tech in Arlington, Va., Oct. 5.

“Cyberspace is the soft underbelly of American power,” said Moran, who called the need for more effective solutions for cyberspace an “urgent national priority.” Keep reading →

Published October 5, 2012 at 4:42 PM

Meeting Government’s High Scale Demand For Identity Management

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Complexity is the name of the game in today’s high-volume identity environments.

“For larger organizations and in customer-facing environments, the quantity and size of datasets are increasing along with performance expectations and data diversity,” notes Gartner analyst Kevin Kampman in his recent report, “The Role of Virtual Directory and Synchronization Services in Large-Scale Identity Deployments.” Keep reading →

Published September 6, 2012 at 2:01 PM

NSA Wants to Hire Hackers

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LAS VEGAS (CNNMoney) — Wearing a t-shirt and jeans, America’s top spymaster — National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander, also the head of the U.S. Cyber Command — took the stage Friday at the nation’s largest hacker convention to deliver a recruiting pitch.

“In this room, this room right here, is the talent our nation needs to secure cyberspace,” Alexander told the standing-room-only audience at DefCon, a grassroots gathering in Las Vegas expected to draw a record 16,000 attendees this year. “We need great talent. We don’t pay as high as everybody else, but we’re fun to be around.” Keep reading →

Published July 30, 2012 at 12:00 PM

Mutual Annihilation: If Cyber War Was Only That Easy

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In the wake of Flame, there have been many interesting headlines bubbling up over the past several weeks regarding policy development of cyber “offensive” measures and the future of overall worldwide cyberwar policy. Perspectives vary greatly as to the future of cyber offensive measures, with one author going so far as to say that the world will be a better place when war strategies shift from the physical to the cyber realm.

One thing is clear – discussions of ‘striking back’ at an entity that has just hacked a government system or retaliating when a breach is identified signals a significant change in the traditional US Government mindset and combat philosophy in general. Will the change from a primarily defensive strategy in securing government systems to an “offense” mentality improve our national security posture? Likely so. Are we prepared to engage? It appears we are even willing to make a first strike. Keep reading →

Published July 10, 2012 at 12:00 PM

Obama Issues ‘WikiLeaks’ Order To Better Safeguard Information

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The White House has issued an executive order today aimed at improving the security of classified networks and preventing the release of documents to organizations such as WikiLeaks that have compromised classified and delicate intelligence information.

The so-called “WikiLeaks Order“ issued by President Obama on Friday emphasizes the need for structural reforms by making agencies primarily responsible for the information they obtain and share. Keep reading →

Published October 7, 2011 at 1:39 PM

DoD’s Scale Promises Bigger Payoff From IT Reform

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The sheer size of the Department of Defense (DoD) makes streamlining IT operations or changing IT investment management daunting, yet this size makes the payoff of successes that much greater.

To achieve these successes, we are looking to reap the benefits of today’s leading edge thinking and technologies in many of the IT management efforts we have underway. Several of our initiatives dovetail nicely with the 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management, such as the IT Enterprise Strategy and Roadmap and cloud computing strategy that the Department is currently developing. Keep reading →

Published August 18, 2011 at 2:00 PM