As the nation’s dependence on cyber networks increases and threats to its computer assets grow, the Air Force’s has identified a need to beef up partnerships with other agencies and a need to smooth out policies that would allow the nation to go on the offensive.
Lt. Gen. Bob Elder, the commander of the 8th Air Force and Joint Functional Component Commander for Global Strike and Integration at Strategic Command, said he worries about a number of onslaughts to the nation’s networks.
He said he worries about data manipulation, data loss or espionage, how to clean military networks without taking them offline. The military is working on solutions like auditing the system to find vulnerabilities so it can guard against them and detecting software tampering. In addition, airmen are given laptop and desktop “tools” to counter threats and then are drilled with dummy threats to see if they use the tools to fix the problems, Elder said on recently at a panel discussion at the National Press Club sponsored by the Air Force Association’s Eaker Institute.
On the personnel side, the Air Force is making “cyber-officer” a career track and embedding “cyber” as a component of service exercises and in weapons school as the Air Force establishes Cyberspace Command.
As cybersleuths look for who is responsible for breaches to the network, they are also looking to build partnerships not just with other services within the Defense Department but also with agencies like the National Security Agency, the Homeland Security Department and law enforcement, he said.
Drawing on a recent theme of discussion, panelists agreed that current policies pose roadblocks to the nation going on offense in cyberspace.
The service needs a good concept of operations and proposal that will illuminate the concept for policymakers in the way the Defense Department has done with other classified programs, said retired Gen. John Jumper, the former Air Force chief of staff.
“We haven’t started down that road adequately,” he said.
Policy impediments are present, but they are there for good reason–to force the nation to proceed in a measured, reasoned way, he said.
During a separate panel discussion at the Association of the U.S. Army conference later that day, Air Force Lt. Gen. Charlie Croom, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, and commander of the Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations, said the word “attack” is often misused when it comes to the network. The term has to do with stealing information from the network in a way akin to spying, he said.
Croom echoed Jumper’s comments, saying that the military has lots of laws it needs to follow. “They’re good laws,” he said.