Lt. Gen. Alan Lynn\u2019s current role means he has two jobs. He\u2019s in charge of fielding enterprise IT throughout the Department of Defense, while also protecting DoD networks across the military. Neither is a small task, but there\u2019s an army of nearly 7,000 active duty and civilian employees, as well as industry partners and allies, charged with supporting the span of agency missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those industry partnerships were front and center Nov. 6 at the Defense Information Systems Agency\u2019s Forecast to Industry where agency officials described upcoming opportunities and emerging requirements. Lynn sat down with reporters, including C4ISRNET\u2019s Amber Corrin, to discuss top priorities, pressing initiatives and his take on working with the private sector \u2014 including employing commercial technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET<\/b>: One of the initiatives that we heard about for a while is the Joint Information Environment. Then, for a while, we didn\u2019t hear quite as much, other than about the development of the joint regional security stacks. What\u2019s the current status of both JIE and JRSS?<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
LT. GEN. ALAN LYNN:<\/b> It\u2019s important to understand that JIE is not a program, it is a concept. That\u2019s the key phrase: it\u2019s a concept. So, it\u2019s not [Acquisition Category I major defense acquisition] program, it\u2019s a concept of going joint where it makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
JRSS is the first instance where we have broadly agreed that this needs to be a joint capability. So JRSS provides that capability to protect in a regional fashion instead of at post, camp or station. The reason why that\u2019s important is because once you have a complete regional picture with all the posts, camps and stations running through it, then you can centrally see across all of the Department of Defense, and once it\u2019s [complete], what\u2019s happening at any given time. With big data analytics on top of that, now you can properly defend the network in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not a thing, like one thing. JRSS is not one thing \u2014 it\u2019s multiple, best-of-breed, different capabilities that provide different types of protection. There\u2019s an A side and a B side; it can bounce between kind of the left and right sides. That\u2019s just one part of the defense, because there are multiple layers of defense that go all the way up to the internet access point. We have the very best in internet access point capability; we have some very unique things that we\u2019ve worked on with some of the three-letter entities that provide us that \u201csecret sauce\u201d that we need that nobody else has. And then it gets down to JRSS, which is the next layer of defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I like the phrase \u201cdecentralized,\u201d because when it comes down at the post, camp and station they\u2019re still able to get up into that JRSS and actually see things that are happening on their network. So they\u2019re defending at that level \u2026 it\u2019s not like it\u2019s taken over from Big Brother. It\u2019s interactive, it\u2019s multi-tenancy \u2014 multiple tenants are reading what\u2019s happening on JRSS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET:<\/b> DISA has a fair amount of upcoming contract action related to developing and deploying forward-looking command and control capabilities. What are your goals for these C2 capabilities, and what are you looking to do in the future that\u2019s different from what\u2019s been done in the past?<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
LYNN:<\/b> A big piece of it is mobility. We\u2019ve done a lot of work with virtualization \u2026 we think [what\u2019s key is] the tactical piece we\u2019re enabling in that level power in a smaller box. We need that piece to go forward when [troops are] disconnected; you\u2019ll be able to operate to speed for the needs of the war fighter. Then, when they get reconnected back in they\u2019ll be able to pull all of that information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second piece, looking toward the future, [is] we\u2019re looking at those command and control systems and starting to design those to live in a mobile space so we can use them on the mobile platforms we\u2019re using, whether that be a tablet or smartphone. We see that as what war fighters are going to be carrying around so we\u2019re moving toward providing those command and control options in mobile platforms, as opposed to the older architecture of some server somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s been a challenge. It used to be that if you wanted to access the [classified SIPR network], you had to drive in to work; you had to go to a SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility]. Senior leaders had [suitcase-based classified communications capability]. But this frees everybody up \u2014 it is a cost-effective way of getting SIPRNet [the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network] down to every user if need be. For those that need that capability, it\u2019s available wherever they are, and that\u2019s an important change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET<\/b>: Another big, recent contract for DISA is last summer\u2019s $500 million award of milCloud 2.0. How do you balance the speed and technological edge of commercial cloud against your DoD-specific security requirements?<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
LYNN:<\/b> As I switch my hat from DISA director to Joint Force Headquarters-DoDIN commander, responsible for the cyber protection of the entire DoD, from my perspective on the cloud when you\u2019re talking about security is there\u2019s an important part of DoD\u2019s applications that need a lot of it. But there\u2019s also a large group of them that do not, so we push those to a straight-up commercial cloud. That helps me because it\u2019s a lot less that I have to defend. The more I push down that doesn\u2019t need security, the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of our cloud is commercial. There isn\u2019t a DoD cloud that\u2019s not commercial. The big difference really is, for ours, it\u2019s on-premises which means we can wrap all our security around it, and the others are off-premises. Those are less secure. And we use those, too \u2014 we encourage that. Where it makes sense to be outside, it should be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: <\/b>U.S. Cyber Command has talked about the idea of a defensive cyber operations concept of operations with the \u201cFive Eyes\u201d alliance that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. What does that mean for you in terms of sharing information with partners to help make the U.S. more secure?<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
LYNN:<\/b> The problem with the Joint Force Headquarters-DoDIN side is that much of what we could talk about gets into high classification space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can tell you that we do work with our Five Eyes partners all the time; it\u2019s non-stop. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to change in the future \u2014 if anything, I see growth in that area for other allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET:<\/b> We\u2019re at Forecast to Industry, which is obviously a major event for industry groups looking to do business with DISA. How do you view the partnership between DISA and the commercial sector as it stands right now?<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
LYNN:<\/b> We\u2019re working together with industry to provide effects. We\u2019re not doing it just for our own interest \u2014 it\u2019s really for the war fighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As we develop, we\u2019re trying to look for things that are a win-win. A long time ago we developed ARPANET; it became the internet, and that was a huge win-win. Microwaves. We developed that and it became a household thing. We\u2019re looking at the commercial side \u2026 what\u2019s on the commercial side that can be a win-win? It will ultimately drive down the costs for the Department of Defense if it\u2019s a win on the commercial side as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fielding enterprise IT and protecting networks for the Department of Defense, the Defense Information Systems Agency director and Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Networks commander shared top priorities, pressing initiatives and his take on working with the private sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":26795,"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":20,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,29,32,20],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2772],"class_list":["post-9871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-newsletters","category-thought-leadership"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"OOMWVEX5NBCOPDXOVLOEOGJUEI","arc_canonical_url":"\/thought-leadership\/2017\/12\/27\/command-conversation-lt-gen-alan-lynn\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n