The total population on the Internet is 1.6 billion. The majority of users engage in social computing, where numerous online services offer opportunities for sharing information. There are currently 156 social computing sites, but that number is growing to meet increasingly diverse interests. Sites with more than 15 million registered users include Digg, FriendFinder, Facebook, Flixster, Flickr, Friendster, Habbo, LinkedIn, MyLife, MySpace, Orkut, Plaxo, Twitter, YouTube, UStream and Wiki. These services had a total membership of 1.4 billion as of last fall.

The problems presented by information technology acquisition pale in comparison to those of cybersecurity acquisition. Challenges range from rapidly changing requirements to outmoded criteria for the security work force. And, these challenges coalesce against the backdrop of an ever-increasing cyberspace menace that is growing in both size and sophistication worldwide.

The U.S. Army has ushered in an era of unprecedented information sharing with the introduction and spread of its Warfighters’ Forums. The online collaboration tools enhance communication between operating and generating forces while simultaneously building upon the way young soldiers interact. All three Army commands—Army Forces Command, Army Training and Doctrine Command and Army Materiel Command—are involved with the forums, which provide a proactive means to enhance dialogue.

African nations are overcoming the tyranny of distance posed by their massive continent through an exercise designed to increase command, control, communications and computer capacity. Representatives from more than two dozen African countries met in Gabon at the end of last September through the beginning of October to test technology compatibility. The event helps build relationships and enhance interoperability during disaster relief and peacekeeping missions. The most recent effort built off past exercises and included a variety of first-time occurrences. It also identified new areas of need such as the addition of an information assurance technical working group.

The latest combatant command to join the ranks in the U.S. Defense Department has set out on a different mission than its well-established brethren. From its very conception, the U.S. Africa Command has been designed to help the nations in its area of responsibility to help themselves. Since its inception two years later, it has been fulfilling that vision with assistance from other U.S. government agencies in an area that comprises 53 countries that include more than 800 ethnic groups who speak more than 1,000 languages. In essence, it is not a typical combatant command.

While the dust has been kicking up around U.S. Defense Department social networking policies, the Defense Information Systems Agency has been actively pursuing one option that could address many challenges commercial sites pose. Hundreds of military and government personnel have been test-driving DEFStar, a commercially developed colleague network that resembles Facebook. From this pilot program, the agency hopes to find the middle ground between classified-only collaboration and the Wild West environment of the World Wide Web.

A collaborative planning and information-sharing capability is making a key U.S. military strategic command and control system more flexible and responsive to rapidly changing operations. This family of applications allows planners to create mission templates that draw on real-time data such as intelligence, weather and unit status. This information can be shared with other personnel for input and comments before being presented to commanders for approval.

An experiment designed to promote information sharing among U.S. military, government and state organizations has demonstrated that the technical challenges to connecting different groups are easily overcome. The event’s organizers found that the real difficulty lies in changing institutional cultures and attitudes about security and data transfers.

While the push forward for better collaboration and information-sharing capabilities will require technical advances, the experts at a NATO workshop in Brussels, Belgium, in October shared that they are struggling with an even bigger challenge than connecting the bits and bytes. The complex policy, governance and legal issues that a single interoperability level creates must be resolved because real lives are involved. Dag Wilhelmsen, technical director, NATO Communication and Information Systems Services Agency, and workshop moderator, opened the workshop by saying that its purpose was to establish a common language, vision and standards for identity management in a federated environment.

Security and information sharing have prominent and complementary roles in countering asynchronous warfare challenges, but many of today’s defense policies and military forces still are organized for World War II-type threats. NATO is looking ahead at the emerging challenges in light of a wider threat and is seeking a more collaborative environment in response.