“The People's Republic of China’s efforts to steal intellectual property, gain critical infrastructure footholds and disrupt supply chains pose significant risk to DoD's ability to defend the nation," CYBERCOM Commander Gen. Haugh said.
DISA Director Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner also provided an update on the Pentagon's sprawling cloud effort, saying 13 task orders have gone out, totaling some $200 million.
The Sixth Domain is not defined by geography. It’s a new kind of conflict in which autonomy and networked systems allow thousand-dollar consumer electronics to destroy multi-million-dollar conventional weapons systems.
"We decided to go with J codes for the fact of better aligning with our combatant commands, better aligning with the Joint Staff, and as a Combat Support Agency, it just makes sense," Lt. Gen. Skinner said.
"While we have been working on developing a zero trust prototype for the unclassified network, we realized early on that we must develop one, in tandem, for the classified side," Christopher Barnhurst, DISA deputy director, said.
"As far as reaching out to kind of the multinational world and the federal space, we haven't yet, but that's something that's kind of on the roadmap for us to get to," Drew Malloy, technical director for DISA’s cyber development directorate, said.
"The ultimate goal is understanding exactly what is happening on the network, who is connecting, what is connected, and what are those devices and users doing on the network so you can make sure that, where connection is necessary for a mission, it's available but also that it's secure," Forescout's Dean Hullings said.
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
"I have a mantra of 'I want to kill to the [Common Access Card] as the primary authentication mechanism for the department'," Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner said. "Industry has better authentication, and it's not just two-factor, it's truly multi-factor authentication."