Cyber Force Fights Training Shortfalls: NSA, IONs, & RIOT

Cyber Force Fights Training Shortfalls: NSA, IONs, & RIOT
Cyber Force Fights Training Shortfalls: NSA, IONs, & RIOT

CAPITOL HILL: The military’s new cyberspace force is working to overcome recruiting and retention shortfalls, training bottlenecks, and its dependence on the National Security Agency, officials told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. These devils in the details are an inevitable part of standing up a new kind of force for a new kind of…

Busting The Green Door: Army SIGINT Refocuses On Russia & China

Busting The Green Door: Army SIGINT Refocuses On Russia & China
Busting The Green Door: Army SIGINT Refocuses On Russia & China

Over 17 years of fighting terrorists and insurgents, “our SIGINT forces mastered the art and science of identifying and tracking individual threats with pinpoint precision,” Lt. Gen. Berrier said. “We now face a significant challenge on a much larger scale.”

US Needs Hi-Lo Mix Of ‘Exquisite’ & Affordable ISR: Intel Official

US Needs Hi-Lo Mix Of ‘Exquisite’ & Affordable ISR: Intel Official
US Needs Hi-Lo Mix Of ‘Exquisite’ & Affordable ISR: Intel Official

“Those will be debates we’ll have over the next couple of years, and those are some tough choices,” intelligence official Kevin Sherman told me. “Do we reduce some of those capabilities have been very helpful in the CT (counter-terrorism) fight, that a lot of our combatant commands have relied on, in order to buy more exquisite things?”

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How To Recruit Young Cyber Warriors When There Aren’t Enough

How To Recruit Young Cyber Warriors When There Aren’t Enough
How To Recruit Young Cyber Warriors When There Aren’t Enough

COLORADO SPRINGS: One topic dominates just about every conversation here at the AFCEA cyber symposium: where to find promising cyber warriors and how to hire them and keep them. Deloitte, which is building a substantial cyber warfare portfolio, put on a Capture the Flag game where five teams of college hackers had to find code…

US ‘Not Doing Enough’ To Stop Russian Meddling In 2018, Adm. Rogers Tells SASC

US ‘Not Doing Enough’ To Stop Russian Meddling In 2018, Adm. Rogers Tells SASC
US ‘Not Doing Enough’ To Stop Russian Meddling In 2018, Adm. Rogers Tells SASC

WASHINGTON: Under relentless grilling from Democratic senators, the four-star officer who heads both Cyber Command and the NSA said the US government is “not doing enough” to prevent Russia from meddling in the 2018 elections. Could the US keep the Russians from interfering again? asked Sen. Claire McCaskill. “Yes,” Adm. Michael Rogers said at once.…

Three Contract Protests Lodged Against NSA!

Three Contract Protests Lodged Against NSA!
Three Contract Protests Lodged Against NSA!

WASHINGTON: The National Security Agency, which can go for 10 years without a contract protest, currently faces three, slowing the agency’s ability to issue new contracts. “We are sitting on three of them right now. Used to be you could go a decade without one, let alone sitting on three in one year,” Charlie Stein, of…

CYBERCOM: Finally A Real Command, But Still Dual Hatted

CYBERCOM: Finally A Real Command, But Still Dual Hatted
CYBERCOM: Finally A Real Command, But Still Dual Hatted

UPDATED: Adds Comment By Former Top Navy Cyber Warrior WASHINGTON: After half a decade of dithering by Democrats and Republicans, the Trump administration has finally made Cyber Command a unified combatant command. The White House statement does not name the first head cyber warrior since it remains a dual-hatted command, with the head of the…

WannaCry Worm Highlights Federal & Industry Failures

WannaCry Worm Highlights Federal & Industry Failures
WannaCry Worm Highlights Federal & Industry Failures

The WannaCry worm proves that our collective response to cyber threat continues to churn ineffectively in the same futile rut while threats multiply and grow increasingly serious by the day. Channeling Hobbes, government must assume the role of the Leviathan, establishing a monopoly on cyber violence, in this nascent global commons. We must get behind a…

Hill Intel Committees Order DNI, NSA/CyberCom Review

Hill Intel Committees Order DNI, NSA/CyberCom Review
Hill Intel Committees Order DNI, NSA/CyberCom Review

Ever since the day of its creation, critics have slammed the Office of Director of National Intelligence as an expensive and unnecessary bureaucracy, a threat to the longtime primacy of the Director of Central Intelligence and a toothless tiger. Much of that changed during the joint tenures of DNI Mike McConnell and SecDef Bob Gates…

Rogers, Richardson, Neller Brainstorm Future Cyber Structure

Rogers, Richardson, Neller Brainstorm Future Cyber Structure
Rogers, Richardson, Neller Brainstorm Future Cyber Structure

SAN DIEGO: Adm. Mike Rogers, who heads both NSA and Cyber Command, is looking past CYBERCOM’s elevation to an independent Unified Command towards a much wider reorganization of military cyber. Some reorganization is implicit in a Feb. 17 memo in which Defense Secretary Jim Mattis charges Deputy Secretary Bob Work to “develop an initial plan……

Trump DepSecDef Prospect Urges Federal Cyber To Go Analog

Trump DepSecDef Prospect Urges Federal Cyber To Go Analog
Trump DepSecDef Prospect Urges Federal Cyber To Go Analog

The only line about national security in Donald Trump’s YouTube video about his administration’s top priorities mentioned cyber. If you want to know something about what was behind that unusual focus, read this op-ed by one of the top candidates for Deputy Defense Secretary, former Air Force Secretary Mike Wynne. Read on. The Editor. Academics…

America Must Decide How To Act After Russian Election Hacks

America Must Decide How To Act After Russian Election Hacks
America Must Decide How To Act After Russian Election Hacks

What are we going to do about the Russian hacks that have wrought havoc across the entire political spectrum and are rapidly shifting from being an embarrassment to, possibly, being strategically crippling? The body count of ruined careers aside, sizeable harm is being done to our political process and a likely intelligence loss as foreign actors rummage…

SecDef Carter Hedges On Splitting NSA, CyberCom

SecDef Carter Hedges On Splitting NSA, CyberCom
SecDef Carter Hedges On Splitting NSA, CyberCom

SAN FRANCISCO: Defense Secretary Ash Carter repeatedly refused to confirm or deny reports that he’s recommended the President split the National Security Agency from US Cyber Command. However, reading between the lines of his remarks here at the TechCrunch conference, there are strong hints he might favor separating the two. Meanwhile, back in Washington, Senate Armed…

911: Do We Need A Director of National Intelligence?

911: Do We Need A Director of National Intelligence?
911: Do We Need A Director of National Intelligence?

One of the major shifts in American intelligence after the terror attacks of 911 was the creation of the Director of National Intelligence and a whole new agency to serve him in his task of ensuring America’s 17 intelligence agencies (including the DNI) played well together, effectively shared information and didn’t waste too much in…