The largest simultaneous high school cyberdefense competition ever held wrapped up late last month, crowning a champion and sending kids to college who otherwise would not have attended.

In an effort to help members of the military move from "boots to suits," a program will begin that helps warfighters turn in their weapons for a computer keyboard.

As the Congress and the DC dignitary debate if health care is affordable given the nation's first trillion dollar annual debit incursion, I am wondering where the money would come from should the United States need to defend its national interests against another Al Qaeda attack or worse. The President has already frozen budgetary growth for all discretionary spending not related to national security, but can the Defense Department and Intelligence Community remain fenced for much longer given the increasing national debt ----- the size of which already is a national security concern in its own right?

With some of this basic knowledge out of the way (refer to Part 1), you may want to know that it has been estimated that 75% of the IC budget eventually flows towards the military. Keep in mind that if you break down the IC into civilian and military, then we're talking the following agencies: NSA, MCIA (USMC Intelligence Activity), DIA, NGA, NRO, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the USAF. Obviously, the entire Army is not an intelligence agency, but others in this list are entirely absorbed into the IC. Interestingly, the NSA just recently became labeled as a combat agency, moving away from Combat Support Agency (CSA). This was an upgrade on several levels. And realize that there are plenty of joint commands where a security clearance is absolutely in use, for instance, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), to name just a few. Most space related organizations operate at SECRET or above.

The U.S. Army has announced the Apps for the Army (A4A) challenge, a three-month outreach to the service’s active duty, National Guard and civilian employees that will award as much as $2,000 to the top entries.

While rummaging through old files on my hard drive I encountered a piece I wrote in June 2002 which captured in writing something I had been briefing for several years. I had been briefing "Principles" which I had observed/learned while the J2 of DoD's JTF-CND and then later J2 of JTF-CNO. My theory was that just as Admiral Bill Studeman has helped intelligence professionals understand their craft better by articulating principles, I could help build understanding of the new field of cyber conflict by generating dialog on principles.

Tragedy can bring opportunity—in this case, to help save lives and reconstruct nations using the communications and information sharing tools that are the strengths of AFCEA’s members. Shame on us if we squander it. Despite the suffering wrought by January’s earthquake in Haiti, the crisis showed how innovative knowledge sharing could dramatically improve public-private, whole-of-government and transnational performance in stressed environments. It is up to us to turn these into lasting effects.

Probably no other area is receiving more attention and more discussion in the global security community than cyberspace. The realm of cyberspace is so critical to every part of society that it finally has been recognized as both a major asset and a threat environment. It could have tremendous impact on defense as well as crucial industries such as finance, energy, water and others if denied to nations or companies. As a result, every nation is trying to define its roles and vulnerabilities in cyberspace, and alliances such as NATO are creating organizations and procedures to strengthen their position.

Ask any small unit deployed in theater, and troops will say their number one communications challenge is obtaining ready access to reliable, real-time voice and data connectivity. An innovative satellite-based tactical communications system featuring a unique multicast one-to-many architecture is helping warfighters solve that problem, and it works virtually anywhere, including the challenging terrain of Afghanistan.