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A flood of new sensors has the U.S. Air Force awash in data, so now one of its priorities is to determine how to best process, exploit and disseminate information both today and in future operations. Lt. Gen. Larry D. James, USAF, the service’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, says his organization needs the tools to fuse and format data using technology to facilitate data sharing even in hostile physical or cyber environments.

Out with the old (Cold War systems), in with the new: Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta says that ISR, space and cyber will be new priority areas as the Defense Department embarks on a strategy befitting the new global security environment. Speaking at a January 5 Pentagon press conference, Panetta defined the future military as “a smaller and leaner force” with reductions coming in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps. This force will be more agile and flexible, ready to deploy quickly, and it will feature new technologies and other advances.

Even as he was saying his farewells, now-former Defense Secretary Robert Gates apparently had a change of heart about moving responsibility for the Pentagon’s computer networks from the Defense Department Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) into the newly established U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM).

This is a loaded question. I do not mean to suggest that we should take advantage of another's misfortune, even when it is the Department of Defense's. Real harm has been done by the Wikileaks perpetrators and the incident has certainly affected national security. Alliances and perhaps lives, may be at risk in real ways. However, my point in asking the question is this: the functionality offered by 'insider security monitoring' and role based cyber security has taken-on a new priority in the IC...and perhaps the entire federal government. And so it should. The implication is that in all federal agencies, big events (or screw-ups) typically precede big changes as well as big spending in certain categories.

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.

In February 2009 I cavalierly gave ambassador Negroponte a grade of "Incomplete" for failing to establish the prerogatives of the office and outgoing DNI Mike McConnell a "Gentleman's B" for his performance as the second Director of National Intelligence based on the following accomplishments: · FISA Modernization · Executive Order 12333 rewrite · National Cyber Security Initiative · Development of "A" Space · Security Clearance Reform · Intelligence Community (IC) joint duty program

Vice Adm. Nancy Brown, USN, director, J6, The Joint Staff, provided an overview of Global Information Grid (GIG) 2.0, an effort to reduce barriers to information sharing. With cyber now an official warfighting domain, the military has to figure out how to navigate in that domain where networks are platforms and information is a payload. Adm. Brown says there are too many networks and GIG 2.0 is a framework to bring together service intranets to act as one global network.

His contribution to peace in both the real and virtual worlds was inspired on September 11, 2001, as he watched the Twin Towers collapse: "It's a small world; it's a fragile world; and no one is safe until everyone is safe. You're called to serve the peace." Those are the words that Rod Beckstrom, director, National Cyber Security Center, DHS, heard in his head.

Cyber warfare. Critical infrastructure. Increased threat. Information assurance—or information security—is not the endeavor it used to be. The democratization of the Internet has had the same, albeit unwelcome, effect on criminal cyberspace activities. The extensive incorporation of information systems and networks into every facet of our lives has created a web of vulnerability across the spectrum of society. A threat can emerge from anywhere at any time in virtually any form.