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Increased situational awareness continued as the focus of importance here at LandWarNet. Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorensen, USA, the chief information officer/G-6 of the Army, gave a high-level view of the current path of the Army enterprise, emphasizing that everything done comes down the need for shared situational awareness. All other pieces must support the effort to provide the warfighters with the information they need.

The solutions to the Army's network problems have no easy answers according to opinions from the first panel here at LandWarNet. Leaders in industry addressed five questions about how to improve or address various facets of the Army enterprise, but rarely did any of the responses provide straightforward solutions.

I see some true leadership coming out of selected individuals in the IC and it is inspiring. Sure, there are a million things that could be better and nobody would deny this. However, my philosophy is that we need to support the ones who are in charge, and help them do their job. This is the system we have. Working against it won’t help you reach your goals and certainly will not help the nation reach its goals.

Linton Wells II points to UnityNet as an example of how information sharing can support U.S. and coalition strategy in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the globe. He then challenges readers: "Now think of how you can support UnityNet-like approaches."

John Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, is being awarded a $147 million ceiling increase to a previously awarded contract to continue

L-3 Communications System West, Salt Lake City, Utah, was recently awarded a $17 million contract for 345 Type II interim encryption system kits in various configurations.  U.S.

A seemingly dead program now has new life as the basis of a U.S. Army tactical communications system. Building on extensive past funding, the service is excerpting pieces of the past and crafting them into a network for the future. This time around, the Army is drawing the users into the design process sooner so that the results are likely to pay big dividends.

Instead of a NASCAR winner-take-all competition, the race to secure information systems is more of a traffic jam where getting ahead depends on the lane you’re in. Operators consistently crawl along by putting patches in place and upgrading antivirus software, yet that annoying lane-changing system attacker keeps bobbing and weaving its way to the front of the gridlock daring you to catch up. But information superhighway menaces are being quashed by a collaborative effort among government organizations to ensure that the United States is in the correct lane when it comes to staying ahead of information security troublemakers.

It is almost impossible to overstate the importance computer networks and Internet-oriented applications play in today’s federal arena. After all, Pentagon officials constantly stress the military superiority inherent in net-centric warfare in which voice, data, satellite images and video provide essential battlefield information in real time. In this electronic enclave, U.S. fighting forces always stay at least one step ahead of the enemy.

This month’s SIGNAL Magazine includes a focus on information security, which, these days, I can only think about in the context of the larger cybersecurity problem. There finally is a preoccupation with discussing cybersecurity on an international basis. The important question is, “How much of this dialogue is being converted to action/implementation?” This is a timely subject for me, as I have written this commentary while sitting in an international conference on Regional Collaboration in Cyber Security being held in Singapore.