U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) has beefed up its effort to counter cyber threats after being subjected to a high level of attacks in recent years, the chief of the command said yesterday.
Air Force Gen. William Fraser said there was a 30 percent increase in cyber-attacks on TRANSCOM from 2010 to 2011, and the command is working closely with its commercial partners to curtail the attacks.
“We are aggressively attacked,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). Fraser attributed the rate to the fact that 90 per cent of its networks are unclassified because of its close partnership with commercial businesses.
TRANSCOM is working closely with its commercial partners and within industry to develop solutions. It is looking to consolidate the number of networks and hardware operating openly in part by bringing them into the command’s fold.
“We have number of systems out there that we are trying to bring into our net so we can collapse the net and not have as broad a base so that the bad guys would be able to attack us,” Fraser said. “It will be easier to defend if we are able to collapse the net, have less hardware out there and be able to control it.”
The command has been making progress and there have been no successful attacks of late, he said.
TRANSCOM has also been working with the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, Strategic Command and National Security Agency to improve security and is encouraged by the initiatives underway to counter the problem, he said.
TRANSCOM, headquartered at Scott AFB, Ill., oversees global air, land and sea transportation for the Department of Defense.