The head of the new Cyber Command says that developing better situational awareness over the military’s computing networks is one of his primary challenges.
Two weeks after the sub-unified military command’s activation, Commander Army Gen. Keith Alexander says that U.S. cyber networks “face a dangerous combination of known and unknown vulnerabilities, strong adversary capabilities, and weak situational awareness,” reports our sister publication Defense Daily.
Thus, his short-term to-do list in the military realm is to help define requirements for improving situational awareness of networks used in war zones, the four-star general says at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The [military] commander has to have confidence in his command and control system,” Alexander says, “And increasingly our intelligence, our operations, our weapons platforms are all being brought together in cyberspace. We have to have confidence that that space is secure and whoever’s running that space for that commander in that area has to know that that’s secure.”
Alexander says that after addressing theater-based concerns he must focus on improving such visibility overall Defense Department networks around the globe.
“We have no situational awareness,” Alexander says. “It’s very limited. Oftentimes our situational awareness is indeed forensics, which means that something has happened. We are now responding to that, and we’re saying, ‘Okay, something got through.'”
Alexander sees a requirement for real-time situational awareness with a common and shareable operating picture so the Pentagon can react quickly to attacks.
“We must share indications and warning threat data at Net speed, among and between the various operating domains,” he says. “We must synchronize command and control of integrated defensive and offensive capabilities, also at Net speed.”
Defense companies have not yet developed the type of common operating picture of networks that the Pentagon needs “with the depth that we need to that that to,” Alexander says.
Part of the challenge of improving situational awareness over U.S. networks involves coordinating activities between the military services and the rest of the federal government, he says. Alexander, who also directs the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Md., says his specific role in tackling the situational awareness problem is to “help articulate the requirements” for DoD networks.
He says he will also assist other federal departments and agencies.
“I think from a national perspective if we come up with a situational awareness too, call it X, that we should have each other department pay to have X developed for them too, perhaps we could all use it,” he says.
Cyber Command is within U.S. Strategic Command.