The Cyber Edge

The U.S. National Security Agency/Central Security Service’s National Cryptologic School is expanding its reach of cyber education programs. The school’s Center for Education, Innovation and Outreach has many cyber-related programs supporting elementary, middle school, high school, college and graduate students. Although it has made great headway in its established programs, the National Security Agency is still working to provide cyber education to underserved regions in the United States.

The spate of 2021’s high-profile cyber attacks has caused policymakers and practitioners to seriously reevaluate the state of security for U.S. critical infrastructure and key resources. From the unprecedented SolarWinds supply-chain infiltration to the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack to the most recent allegations of Chinese state actors infiltrating tens of thousands of Microsoft Exchange mail servers, the scale and scope of cyber attacks against public and private U.S. networks are only worsening. As 5G—and eventually 6G—moves to increasingly meshed networks, the challenge of network defense only grows.

The changing nature of threats and countermeasures cries out for new perspectives in cybersecurity, commercial experts say. Training and education must assume greater variety, but trainees also must be chosen from diverse backgrounds to provide new perspectives on threats and potential solutions.

The Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic, on behalf of the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, announced on December 7 that it had awarded an other transaction agreement to Advanced Technology International (ATI) to manage its second Information Warfare Research Project, or IWRP 2. Based in Summerville, South Carolina, ATI will perform consortium management for the IWRP, handling research funding up to $500 million under a five-year period of performance.

The human factor looms as the most imposing challenge to implementing zero-trust security, say experts. Aspects of this factor range from cultural acceptance to training, and sub-elements such as organizations and technologies also will play a role. Ultimately, change will have to come from the top of an organization to be truly effective.

All security measures depend to a large degree on human cooperation, but that is only part of the picture for zero trust. Its implementation will entail a massive change in security procedures both for users and for network architects. And, the ability to share information across organizational boundaries will be strongly affected at all government levels.

The U.S. Defense Department has chalked up a number of accomplishments in a short amount of time aimed at achieving a vision of connecting sensors and weapon systems from all of the military services. However, officials still are assessing the best way to achieve zero trust.

The U.S. Space Force Space Launch Delta 45’s addition of zero-trust architecture to the launch enterprise could bring earth-shattering flexibility to its mission operations, its commander says. Under a year-long pilot effort, officials at Patrick Space Force Base, Florida, Space Launch Delta 45’s headquarters, and nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, its launch range, have installed zero trust-related software and hardware into the launch mission system and are conducting beta testing and evaluation of the capabilities.

The need for the United States to not only have digital literacy but also cybersecurity-educated students is prompting the addition of programs into the middle school level. Students in grades 6-8 can benefit greatly from having a foundational understanding of cyber concepts, as can the nation, officials say.

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA)/Central Security Service’s National Cryptologic School, which already has a robust offering of cyber education programs across the elementary, high school, college and graduate student levels, is growing its specific offerings to middle schools, teachers and kids age 12-14.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command will deliver an initial mission partner environment next summer. The capability ultimately will allow U.S. forces to access classified and unclassified networks with one device. It also will provide more effective information sharing with allies and coalition forces.

One of the early efforts of the national cyber director is to tackle how to strengthen the critical infrastructure of the United States. The key to approaching that overwhelming task is to drive coordination across the federal government and the critical sectors, and to identify the crucial subelements that connect each component, versus trying to protect all sectors at once, which is not quite possible, explained Christopher Inglis, national cyber director, speaking at AFCEA International’s TechNet Cyber conference in Baltimore on October 27.

For the last eleven years, the U.S. Cyber Command, which conducts cyber operations in defense of the nation, has partnered closely with government organizations and private industry to advance is mission. Now, the command, known as USCYBERCOM, is working to bolster its activities with academia as part of its comprehensive engagement plan. It recently launched a new academic engagement strategy that will broaden its communications with more U.S. universities; harness cyber research; promote cyber careers; and add analytical capabilities.

As the 231-year-old U.S. Coast Guard guards the nation’s waterways and ports, more and more it is finding the need to increase its capabilities in the cyber domain, given the rising digital threats to the $5.4 trillion of waterway-based trade. This fall, the maritime service is adding new cyber offensive capabilities and is growing its existing cyber defense, reports Rear Adm. Michael Ryan, USCG, commander of the Coast Guard’s Cyber Command.

The Defense Information Systems Agency is embracing robotic process automation, and it is implementing several steps. The agency is training a cadre of developers, and it is also creating a platform and code library and establishing practices and methods—all to internally improve how it delivers robotic process automation across the agency. By using automated software robots, or bots, that can perform rules-based processes, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) aims to reduce the workload for humans that conduct repetitive tasks across the agency’s financial, public relations, procurement and other offices.

Open source code is used increasingly across the entire federal government and the U.S. military. But a new digital rubicon is looming: the use of open source code as a condition within U.S. Defense Department and intelligence community software acquisition contracts.

As it advances its application of robotic process automation, the Defense Information Systems Agency is expanding its artificial intelligence efforts through a research agreement and a new pilot program. The agency is using these latest efforts to examine the application of artificial intelligence capabilities to network defense—as it conducts its daily around-the-clock mission of protecting the Department of Defense Information Network.

In one effort, the agency is working with Vienna, Virginia-based software company NT Concepts through a cooperative research and development agreement, or CRADA, to apply machine learning (ML) to defensive cyber operations.

As the U.S. Air Force advances on its two important pilot programs designed to inform the service’s larger pursuit of zero-trust architecture, the 16th Air Force is playing a key role in helping to examine its use from an operational perspective.

Eight weeks on the job, the national cyber director, Chris Inglis, is examining the confines of how to approach the cyber adversaries and nation states conducting malicious attacks on the U.S. government, critical infrastructure and private sector. The former deputy director of the National Security Agency and a member of that agency for 28 years, Inglis sees how the Russian government is not taking any action against perpetrators.

Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) officials do not plan to try to force others in the Defense Department or military services to use its zero-trust solution known as Thunderdome.

Thunderdome is a fledgling program that offers a range of capabilities, including secure access service edge (SASE), software-defined area networking (SD-WAN), identity credential access management (ICAM) and virtual security stacks.

SASE, which is pronounced “sassy,” is a technology package that includes SD-WAN, firewall as a service and cloud access security broker. While SASE has been implemented across much of the commercial world, it has not yet been widely adopted by the government.

The U.S. Air Force is pursuing zero-trust architecture on a level not seen before with the lead command, the Air Combat Command, driving many initiatives with a comprehensive view to employ zero-trust architecture across the service’s bases, weapon systems and mission environments. Supporting the cyberspace and engineering side of the effort is the 16th Air Force’s 688th Cyberspace Wing.

The small business sector must seize the day and immediately begin taking the steps necessary to implement tools for cyber resilience and cyber readiness. Scaling cybersecurity services, education and training are crucial to national security.

Regarding the cyber warfare landscape for 2021, the most critical group to secure is the small and midsize business sector (SMBs), particularly following the pandemic. When working with tech-specific organizations and the military, process management and a sense of purpose can overcome inertia and apathy until a financial loss appears.

Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signed off on the U.S. Defense Department’s first-ever strategy for Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2, giving his imprimatur to an ambitious vision of a fully networked U.S. military.

JADC2 aims to provide rear-echelon commanders with continuous connectivity to front-line sensors, providing real-time data and offering an unassailable decision advantage to U.S. forces.

On the digitally managed battlefield envisaged by JADC2, autonomous vehicles and networked weapons would be remotely controlled via cloud-based AI-enabled software, so that a coordinated attack by land, sea, air and cyber forces can be launched with the swipe of a finger.

The novel 2034 by James Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman perpetuates a fundamental misunderstanding of how technology should be employed and managed in future conflicts.

The continuing narrative is that we should purposely degrade our systems in a conflict with a peer competitor because of the possibility of a degraded spectrum, cyber attacks, space-based detection and jamming. But if we preemptively degrade our technology in a peer conflict, we will lose.

In the novel, after a conflict with the Chinese Navy in which the U.S. technical systems were incapacitated, U.S. ships preemptively disabled “any interface with a computer, a GPS or [any interface] that could conceivably be accessed online.”

The U.S. Navy is moving ahead at full speed to equip its assets with effective cybersecurity. However, the diverse nature of those assets—some are city-size ships while others are small but vital systems—confound planners seeking to ensure interoperable security measures.

Winner of The Cyber Edge 2021 Writing Contest

Convincing senior defense decision makers to significantly invest in artificial intelligence capabilities that would add more value to the United States’ already digitized operational capabilities—particularly in the cyber domain—needs more than pronouncements that “AI can save the taxpayers money.” It requires a logical progression of defining the objective, identifying the need, demonstrating specific results, conducting comprehensive cost analysis and, particularly in the case of applications in the cyber domain, thoughtfully discussing resilience and deception.