The Defense Information Systems Agency is coordinating with the DoD CIO office,\u00a0the National Security Agency and the military services in a sweeping review of cyber capabilities that could steer Defense Department operations in cyberspace going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officials at DISA are in the midst of a week-long deep dive on the future\u00a0of the military’s joint regional security stacks, a “summit” coming on the heels of a classified report by DISA, DoD CIO and NSA on their current cyber portfolio,\u00a0as well as\u00a0ongoing, monthly reports\u00a0to the Pentagon chief on the current DoD information security picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The three initiatives are part of a broader DoD focus on gauging current and future capabilities, threats and requirements. The goal is a clearer, department-wide cyber operational picture,\u00a0DISA officials indicated at a Jan. 12 breakfast held by AFCEA DC in Arlington, Virginia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
“What in cybersecurity is providing us the best protection it can for the cost? What are we going to stop, from a legacy sensor or something else people are hugging onto\u2026so that [we] can go buy some innovative capabilities?” said John Hickey, DISA CIO and risk management executive. “We’re looking at this from a threat base, we’re looking at the current tools we have, then we’re going to lay out a plan that says, these are the things providing best defense, these are the things we need to do in the future.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DISA officials aren\u2019t the only ones evaluating IT and cybersecurity efficacy \u2013 even Defense Secretary Ash Carter is keeping an eye on it, in the same way past secretaries regularly monitored reports on traditional defense programs, they said.\u00a0The monthly\u00a0scorecards inform\u00a0the defense secretary\u00a0of ongoing progress \u2013 or lack thereof, such as who may be running outdated, unsupported versions of software that may presenting<\/span> security vulnerabilities, the officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even as the DISA leaders addressed the Arlington audience, at their Fort Meade, Maryland headquarters <\/span>officials at the Fort Meade, Maryland\u00a0headquarters were convening as part of a week-long meeting to map out what\u2019s next for JRSS, one of DoD\u2019s leading efforts in coordinating enterprise-wide military network security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We’re focusing on a couple areas: defining, refining what JRSS 1.5 and 2.0 will look like, and the discussion of the operational construct of how JRSS will be operated,” said Alfred Rivera, director of DISA’s development and business center. “The whole [concept of operations] of how we, as the operator of the JRSS stack, are interoperating, working with the other network operation centers, the 24th Air Force, Army Cyber\u2026understanding our roles and relationships with respect to managing that regional construct that supports those posts, camps and stations.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those meetings come just as leaders wrapped up a classified assessment by DISA, the DoD CIO and the NSANational Security Agency<\/span> that evaluated enterprise cybersecurity tools across the military. While the DISA officials declined to elaborate on the study given the classified nature, Hickey described it as thorough and said that “we\u2019re looking at the existing tools \u2013 whether that\u2019s a sensor at the boundary or it\u2019s an endpoint or it\u2019s a web content-filtering capability\u2026we look at these different tools and say, \u2018What is the threat that they\u2019re defeating, and what is the value of that threat?\u2019”<\/p>\n\n\n\n And as budgets remain flat or declining across DoD, it’s likely that some legacy systems and programs could see the ax as the Pentagon increasingly focuses on cyber. At DISA, that sharpening focus comes as agency officials evaluate lessons learned over the past year since the agency’s major reorganization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We have our program managers looking across whole portfolio saying, ‘Where does it make sense to cut, to not only consolidate but look at economies of all these tools we have so that the war fighter, the [network operations] guy, the cybersecurity guy [all] have a common framework of tools\u2026and can do their jobs,” Rivera said. “It really is a prioritization of what has continued to grow as we build this infrastructure, and now taking a step back and saying, ‘How do we pull this together as one ubiquitous capability?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DISA’s playing a pivotal role in DoD’s wide-reaching re-evaluation of cyber investments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":47564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":40,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[11,40,16,26],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2772],"class_list":["post-15358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-disa","category-disa-vision-guide","category-it-networks","category-special-reports"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"JUONJYZR55CTXCSVI2NE2DJEM4","arc_canonical_url":"\/disa\/disa-vision-guide\/2016\/01\/13\/classified-report-jrss-review-amid-disa-s-hard-look-at-cyber\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n