Executive Editor
FederalNewsRadio
http://www.federalnewsradio.com/index.php?nid=35&sid=1705302
With Defense Secretary Robert Gates announcement Tuesday of the new cyber command, senior officials from all four branches reacted with a mixture of relief and expectation.
"There is an awful lot of confusion in this complex environment," says Maj. Gen. Greg Schumacher, assistant to the deputy chief of staff for the Army G-2. "What I'm most looking forward to is having a single voice to articulate definitions, roles, missions and how we will conduct the missions, and that will enable us to be far more efficient and effective than previously to conduct operations."
Maj. Gen. David Senty, the Air Force's acting vice commander of the provisional cyberspace command and commander of network operations, says the DoD-wide office will make policy and procedures more seamless and consistent across the military.
Navy Rear Admiral-select Sean Filipowski, director of computer network operations at the Network Warfare Command, says the new command will provide better command and control for cyberspace, and a single point of accountability to sort out DoD's cyber mission.
And finally Ray Letteer, the chief for the Marine Corps Information Assurance Division, says the cyber command provides a much needed authoritative voice in cyberspace.
"We have trained individuals and we know how to defend the network," he says. "To be able to have a clear delineation of a fire control cell to tell us when we are suppose to go hot and when we are suppose to not [will be good] . We do that with artillery and air power, I'm looking forward to see same type of thing in cyber domain."
These were some of the reactions of the panelists at the AFCEA Cybersecurity conference in Washington Thursday.
Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, summed up the plans around the new cyber command, saying this was Gates's way of making cyberspace a priority for all of DoD.
"When you think about what don't we have, if the point of integration for those [cyber] functions is me, we are in a hurt," he says. "Where is the staff that brings it all together? [The command] integrates it seamlessly so that in DoD you can operate smoothly between your network operations, the defense, the exploit and the attack as you need to. And you have the rules of engagement laid out, and where is the staff to do that? We don't have the staff do that. The secretary of Defense is putting its commitment there. To the department, this is hugely important."
Alexander, who likely will be the head of the new subcommand, says the constant attack on DoD networks is overwhelming. He says there are 4,000 terrorist Web sites, and DoD's networks face 32,000 attacks a day from more than 100 countries.
"How do we defend our network?" he asks. "The way we've done it in the past, telling systems administrators to set patches and defense against what do know, but not against what we don't know, is not working."
Alexander says there is no common defense across DoD. The network operations and defense are stovepipes, left to defense themselves without enough capabilities.
"Step one is to put that together and come up with mechanisms to do it," he says. "Set up a real time capability to have tipping and cueing between those sensors that is a global cryptological system that is seeing bad things happen and [telling the] defensive folks who are out there."
He adds that the command's goal is to come up with the techniques and procedures to defend the network in an active way and build mechanisms for the services to plug into.
"We got to give the network operators the right security clearance so they can get the right level of threat," he says. "So they can see what that threat is and they know why they have to defend against them."
He says the services will operate their networks with the cyber command having visibility and ability to direct parts of them.
For this reason, Alexander says the cyber workforce across all of DoD must have the same knowledge and skills.
"We've got to have a common block of training for all people operate in cyberspace-for our defenders, our operators, our exploiters and our attackers," Alexander says. "We have to make sure everyone understands the basics of network operations: how defending, exploiting and attacking works together."
Alexander was clear that getting DoD's networks better secured is the command's foremost mission. He realizes DoD will work with the Homeland Security Department and industry to help secure .gov and .com networks, but the .mil domain needs to be addressed first.
"We are on a journey and this will be difficult because there is a lot we need to do to get these networks together," he says. "I'm optimistic about the future, about where we are going, what we can do, the capabilities we have."
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