Cyber

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), announced today the appointment of the first 23 members of the agency’s new Cybersecurity Advisory Committee, a group that will advise and provide recommendations to the director on policies, programs, planning, and training to enhance the nation’s cyber defense.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency may soon release an initial playbook for departments and agencies to follow while transitioning to a zero-trust cybersecurity architecture. The new guidance will be based on lessons learned from various pilot programs across the government.

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 use of zero trust could prove to be a boon for 5G networks by providing vital security across networks made up of a variety of innovative devices and capabilities. Fully established zero trust could allow unprecedented network visibility and situational awareness while ensuring that potential attack points are closed to cyber marauders. Yet, implementing zero trust runs the risk of slowing down the network’s fast data flow if it is not applied properly.

Make no mistake: zero trust represents a cultural shift from today’s approach. It will change the way information is secured and the way users access it. Yet, it also must be applied in ways that do not prevent the secured data from being effectively exploited by its users.

The president has issued an executive order to implement the necessary security to stay ahead of our adversaries. But ultimately, the challenge of zero trust is less one of technology and architecture and more one of integration into the operation and workflows. The key to a successful zero-trust implementation is to secure the data that people need to use while simultaneously enabling them to access it.

More than just a technology focus, zero trust (ZT) is an invitation for all of us to think differently about cybersecurity. We are losing on the cybersecurity battlefield, and continued investment in more advanced versions of the same architecture patterns will not change that.

Known mostly for its large-scale physical projects, the Army Corps of Engineers is erecting a digital infostructure to allow it to engage in operations in a host of different settings. What will be a mobile Corps of Engineers will rely on many top-shelf information technologies, including zero trust.

In the current cybersecurity environment, live video and data distributed within physically secure environments, such as a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), command and control centers, situational awareness or secure briefing centers, is no longer safe and secure.

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.

The Defense Information Systems Agency is introducing a new strategy that will blend five lines of effort with an internal reorganization amid new budgeting authority. The goal is a synergistic effort that ensures information superiority for the U.S. military as it moves forward against new adversarial challenges.

The new strategy aligns the fiscal year 2022 budget collaboratively with internal agency reorganization. This approach is designed by Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) leadership to allow it to make necessary changes for the next several years.

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.

Somewhere in the Middle East, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). After taking video images from 50,000 feet high, the UAV transmits them to an Army command center 100 miles away.

The command center then shares the images with a Navy carrier in the Persian Gulf, with U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) officers and intelligence operatives on land and at sea—as well as in the Pentagon—collaborating via a tactical chat application about what the images mean, to better inform the mission at hand and facilitate command and control (C2).

The software management firm SolarWinds is revising how it approaches security to develop better products and to help its customers and protect the supply chain they all rely on.

Cyber attacks on supply chains are a growing threat, something SolarWinds experienced in 2020 when Russian government-backed hackers breached the servers for one of the company’s software products and compromised the security of hundreds of customers including several dozen federal agencies.

Under its new CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna, the company is changing how it operates internally and with its customers by adopting a security by design approach to its operations.

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.

As the Air Force strives to become a digital force and embraces Chief Gen. C. Q. Brown’s vision of accelerating change, the service is streamlining its cyber and communications career fields. Headquarters Air Force leaders, National Guard and Reserve leaders and major command functional managers of the cyberspace support career field met at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, last week to discuss how to develop the adaptable, agile communications and cyber career fields needed to support future Air Force requirements, reported John Ingle from the 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs.

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Defense

Ransomware is a form of malicious software that infiltrates a computer or network and limits or restricts access to critical data by encrypting files until a ransom is paid.

Ransomware attacks are on the rise and continue to be a disruptive force in the cybersecurity industry, affecting everything from financial institutions to higher education. Due to the rise in remote work prompted by the pandemic, attacks are up 148%.

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 Defense Information Systems Agency, known as DISA, is expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts through a research agreement and a new pilot program. While both efforts are in the beginning stages, the agency is considering how to possibly apply the so-called AI capabilities to network defense—among other areas the agency is separately pursuing—as it conducts its daily 24/7 mission of protecting the Department of Defense Information Network, or DODIN.

The agency entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, or CRADA, with Vienna, Virginia-based software company NT Concepts to apply machine learning (ML) to defensive cyber operations.

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.