DISA State of the Agency: The First 90 Days

Lt. Gen. Alan Lynn, director, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), spoke to a largely industry audience at a November event hosted by the chapter. He called on industry to help the Defense Department safeguard its networks. “We absolutely need industry with us. Otherwise, we can't function,” Gen. Lynn said. “I want to innovate with industry. I want to open our doors to greatness.” Based on what he has seen in his first 90 days as DISA's head, he identified three specific areas where working with private-sector partners could bolster the government networks. The first area is software-defined networks: “Imagine networks that would spin up, drop, spin up and drop, and now you're an adversary trying to get into a network that just dropped,” he said. “It's hard to launch persistent attacks on a software-defined network that's changing all the time. So I want to get to that point where we're developing something that's really hard to attack.” Second, Gen. Lynn said it would be helpful to use more virtual desktop integration: “The chances of bringing something back home with you are pretty good. VDI might be part of that solution where your actual desktop is not really touching the Internet.” Additionally, the general said he wants to “push some of our lesser networks that don't have a lot of security parts back up to the commercial cloud, so that reduces the number of networks I have to really protect,” he said. “You're not trying to protect everything; you're protecting what's important.”

Event Photographs: