{"id":22227,"date":"2018-09-12T16:33:17","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T16:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2018\/09\/12\/former-cybercom-chief-the-us-is-not-where-it-needs-to-be-with-cyber\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T05:01:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T05:01:02","slug":"former-cybercom-chief-the-us-is-not-where-it-needs-to-be-with-cyber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/it-networks\/2018\/09\/12\/former-cybercom-chief-the-us-is-not-where-it-needs-to-be-with-cyber\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the US where it needs to be on cyber?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The recently departed director of the National Security Agency and former head of U.S. Cyber Command believes the U.S. structure and organization against cyberthreats isn\u2019t up to snuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following his time in government, and after observing several high-level and senior discussions, Michael Rogers said one of the fundamental conclusions he\u2019s come to is \u201cthe current structure is not working and it\u2019s not going to work. It\u2019s just suboptimal to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking Sept. 10 at an event hosted by the Aspen Institute in Washington, Rogers said the current structure works against generating the necessary outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the contributing factors, he said, is there is not enough expertise within the senior levels of the government, which lead him to think at times \u201cwe\u2019re talking about fundamental game-changing policy that, if we\u2019re honest, we don\u2019t truly understand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rogers believes the right approach is defining the desired outcome first. Suzanne Spaulding, who formerly served as under secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security and was speaking at the same event, agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spaulding noted that regulatory authority won\u2019t be able to keep up with the dynamic nature of cyberspace, which as a result should force policy to lean toward an outcome-based approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Rogers, the approach, be it regulatory incident response or providing technical expertise, will result in completely different structures being needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest challenge, and potentially the biggest key to success in cyberspace, is partnerships. Rogers said he sees the biggest challenge to cyberspace in totality is that it forces sectors to get out of the traditional approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The traditional course of thinking about what is the government\u2019s role versus what is the private sector\u2019s role is not going to get the nation to where it needs to be in cyber, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all to me about integration and partnerships and bringing the right people, the right institutions together in ways that quite frankly we\u2019re just not used to as institutions and we\u2019re not structured well to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rogers also wondered how bad it is going to have to get before the nation figures out it has to fundamentally restructure the way things are done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PPD-20<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the actual operations front, Rogers was brief when discussing the roll back of Presidential Policy Directive-20, an Obama-era policy directive governing the use of offensive and defensive cyber capability outside government networks.<\/p>\n\n\n