The Federal Communications Commission announced April 20 that it has unanimously approved a long-standing application from Ligado Networks to operate in the L-band spectrum, overriding concerns from the Department of Defense and other government agencies which were worried the company’s plan will cause damage to the Global Positioning System.

The approval had been expected since Friday, when sources told C4ISRNET that the commission’s three Republican members all voted in favor of the measure; a simply 3-2 majority vote is required for passage.

The vote appears to bring to a close the latest chapter in an almost decade-long fight between the Pentagon and Ligado, previously known as LightSquared. C4ISRNET first broke the news that the FCC would move forward with Ligado’s request on April 10.

“I thank my colleagues for coming together on a bipartisan basis to support Ligado’s application,” said FCC chairman Ajit Pai. “This vote is another step forward for American leadership in 5G and advanced wireless services.”

The order included what the FCC described as “stringent conditions” to ensure that the GPS satellite signal would not experience harmful interference.

Sources told C4ISRNET that the push to consider the effort came from the White House, led by Larry Kudlow’s White House National Economic Council. Kudlow has expressed interest in the economic benefits of expanding the nation’s 5G capabilities. In addition, Attorney General Bill Barr has been a vocal supporter of Ligado’s bid, which he views as a way to grow America’s 5G capabilities to challenge China.

“Freeing up L-band spectrum for use in tandem with the C-band, as the Chairman proposes, should greatly reduce the cost and time it will take to deploy 5G throughout the country and would be a major step toward preserving our economic future,” Barr said in a Thursday statement. “I hope the full Commission moves forward quickly.”

In a statement late in the evening of April 17, a Pentagon spokesman reiterated the department’s complaints.

“Americans rely on our Global Positioning System (GPS) each day for many things: to locate citizens in need of emergency assistance through our E-911 system, to secure our financial system, to order and receive shipments, to travel by car for work and leisure, to facilitate commercial trucking and construction work, and even to make a simple cellphone call,” the statement read. “Our Departments rely on GPS each day for all those reasons as well to coordinate tactical national security operations, launch spacecraft, track threats, and facilitate travel by air and sea. The proposed Ligado decision by the Federal Communications Commission will put all these uses of GPS at risk. That’s why our Departments – and almost a dozen other federal agencies – are strongly opposed to the Ligado proposal and have asked for its denial.”

Wide opposition

L-band is described as the range of frequencies between 1 to 2 GHz. GPS, and other international navigation systems, rely on L-band because it can easily penetrate clouds, fog, rain and vegetation. Ligado owns a license to operate the spectrum near GPS to build what the firm describes as a 5G network that would boost connectivity for the industrial “internet of things” market. The company uses the SkyTerra-1 satellite, which launched in 2010 and is in geostationary orbit, and it has planned to deploy thousands of terminals to provide connectivity in the continental United States.

Over the years, Ligado officials have argued their system would use less spectrum, have lower power levels and reduce out-of-channel emissions. In the face of complaints from major commercial GPS companies such as Garmin and John Deere, Ligado has also offered to reduce the amount of spectrum it had initially planned. The company has also said it will work with government agencies to repair and replace equipment if necessary.

Those arguments have been dismissed by the Defense Department, which has focused on potential interference to the GPS network that could come from Ligado’s plans. As recently as March 24, defense leaders were sending letters to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), letters that were not made public, despite a request from the DoD, until they were reported on by C4ISRNET.

While the Pentagon has been the most vocal in its opposition to Ligado’s plan, it was hardly alone. A letter sent from the Air Force on Feb. 20 opposing Ligado’s plan was co-signed by the departments of Commerce, Interior, Justice, Homeland Security, Energy and Transportation, as well as NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Science Foundation.

The Aerospace Industries Association trade group also issued a statement April 16, saying the FCC’s decision to move forward with Ligado’s plan “disregards the serious concerns raised by various government agencies about the harmful impacts to GPS. We urge the FCC to reject the Chairman’s proposal and adequately protect the GPS network that underpins our nation’s military operations and the safety of our airspace.”

In the last week, bipartisan opposition to the application grew in Congress. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the House Armed Services Committee chair, and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, the ranking member of the HASC, all issued statements against the proposal as did Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Califorinia, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on readiness.

After the FCC announced plans to hold a vote on Ligado, Thornberry issued a second statement, indicating the potential for Congress to attempt to block the move.

“We must advance 5G development, but this is not the way to do it. The FCC cannot be allowed to overrule the unanimous opinion of America’s national security leaders,” said Thornberry, who is retiring after this year. “If they do, Congress should immediately revisit and revise their authority.”

The potential move, first reported April 10 by C4ISRNET, has drawn criticism from members of Congress and raised concerns among other government agencies.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated the draft order among his colleagues April 16, according to an agency news release. The five person commission will now have to vote on the measure, with a simple majority needed to implement the agreement. Industry watchers expect that that the measure will pass.

“After many years of consideration, it is time for the FCC to make a decision and bring this proceeding to a close,” Pai said. “We have compiled an extensive record, which confirms that it is in the public interest to grant Ligado’s application while imposing stringent conditions to prevent harmful interference. The draft order that I have presented to my colleagues would make more efficient use of underused spectrum and promote the deployment of 5G and Internet of Things services.” (The next generation of technology to boost wireless connectivity capabilities in known as 5G.)

The order, Pai said in the release, includes language to help protect incumbents, such as GPS, by reporting its base station locations and technical operating parameters before kicking off operations, continuously monitoring the transmit power of its base station sites and shutting down operations if necessary in the event of credible reports of interference.

“Although I appreciate the concerns that have been raised by certain Executive Branch agencies, it is the Commission’s duty to make an independent determination based on sound engineering,” Pai continued. “And based on the painstaking technical analysis done by our expert staff, I am convinced that the conditions outlined in this draft order would permit Ligado to move forward without causing harmful interference.”

Ligado’s leaders praised the decision in an April 16 statement.

“I have always believed that the L-Band spectrum can make a meaningful difference in our nation’s ability to connect,” said Ivan Seidenberg, chairman of Ligado’s board of directors. “There is no doubt that lower mid-band has a key role to play if we are to build the very best 5G networks, and it is clear now more than ever that we must do just that. The FCC’s decision to move the approval process forward is an important and forward-looking one that will advance the public interest and U.S. global leadership.”

Attorney General Bill Barr also praised the decision in an April 16 release.

“I applaud FCC Chairman Pai’s proposal to make available L-band spectrum, to be used together with C-band spectrum, for deployment of advanced wireless services, including 5G,” he said. “As I said in my speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, swift FCC action on spectrum is imperative to allow for the deployment of 5G. This is essential if we are to keep our economic and technological leadership and avoid forfeiting it to Communist China. Freeing up L-band spectrum for use in tandem with the C-band, as the Chairman proposes, should greatly reduce the cost and time it will take to deploy 5G throughout the country and would be a major step toward preserving our economic future. I hope the full Commission moves forward quickly.”

Later in the day, a coalition of commercial interests filed a petition with the FCC to dismiss the application.

“Given the tortured history of this proceeding and the current state of the record, the Commission and all parties concerned would be best served by starting with a clean slate, including Ligado itself,” a letter read. “The dockets related to the Ligado proceeding should be closed and Ligado’s pending applications should be dismissed. To the extent that Ligado desires to file new applications to fit some new business vision that is consistent with its existing authority, it of course may do so.”

The letter was signed by 22 organizations, including the Aerospace Industries Association, Lockheed Martin Corp., which has built many of the GPS satellites, and Iridium Communications.

In addition, the move frustrated leaders of defense committees in Congress.

“I’m not pleased, to say the least, that the chairman is pushing forward with a draft order approving Ligado’s application, especially in the midst of a global pandemic,” Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an email to C4ISRNET. “This action will amplify, rather than ease, current economic challenges. When people try to push bad policy through in the middle of a crisis, without much coordination with seemingly anyone else, it makes me wonder about their motives. I hope that the other commissioners will listen to the near-unanimous objections from the rest of the federal government – not to mention hundreds of industry leaders – and reject the plan. The risks to our national security are far too great to be ignored, and the precedent this would set is astonishingly misguided.”

The fight over Ligado’s request dates back almost a decade, when the company was known as LightSquared and had different ownership. But objection from the Pentagon has remained steady, with defense leaders saying Ligado’s plan would cause disruptions of the GPS system that could put war fighters in harm’s way.

Supporters, including Pai, have argued that technical changes from Ligado make it so that DoD systems should not be impacted.

Speaking to reporters April 13, Dana Deasy, the Pentagon’s top IT official, made it clear he trusts in the DoD’s evaluation and remains opposed to Ligado’s request.

“We have very strong technical evidence that would suggest moving forward with that proposal would cause harm to the adjacent GPS spectrum,” Deasy said. “Therefore, we continue to believe it’s in the best interests — and I believe I can say this on behalf of all the agencies — it’s in the interest of the government not to pursue the Ligado licensing request.”

The FCC move comes less than 24 hours after three key defense lawmakers, including Inhofe, sent a note to President Donald Trump, asking him to intercede and convince the FCC not to move forward with the plan.

While the president does not have direct control of the FCC, sources tell C4ISRNET that there is a push to support Ligado coming from key administration offices, including the White House National Economic Council. That office is led by Larry Kudlow, who has expressed interest in the economic benefits of expanding the nation’s 5G capabilities.

The letter, signed by Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, the committee’s ranking member, and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, follows a recent report by C4ISRNET that the FCC appears poised to approve the application from Ligado Networks after years of delays.

Privately held Ligado Networks, formerly known as LightSquared, hopes to use spectrum in the L-band frequency that is near where GPS satellites operate. More than 10 federal agencies have opposed the application, led by the Pentagon.

“Ligado’s planned usage will likely harm military capabilities, particularly for the U.S. Space Force, and have major impact on the national economy,” the three congressman wrote. “Further, this plan would cost taxpayers billions of dollars to replace current GPS equipment, which could be rendered useless, and would force American families and businesses to use foreign space-based navigation and timing systems to replace the functions of GPS. This is fundamentally a bad deal for America’s national and economic security, and the timing could not be worse.”

Rep. Adam Smith, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, did not sign the letter.

The correspondence comes five days after the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure teamed up with the chairman of the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee to demand answers from Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao about the issue.

“While we share the desire to make America a leader in 5G networks, Ligado’s proposal is not essential to winning the 5G competition with China,” the April 15 letter from the defense leaders reads. “The bands of spectrum Ligado seeks are not the prime bands that the Department of Defense is working hard to share with industry, and there is grave concern across your administration about the harmful impact of this specific plan from the Departments of Defense, Commerce, Interior, Justice, Homeland Security, Energy, and Transportation, as well as NASA, National Science Foundation, U.S. Coast Guard, and FAA.

“These objections are based on strong evidence from years of testing and analysis that shows that the Space Force’s gold-standard service to the American people will suffer terribly if this proposal is approved.”

The congressmen also asked Trump to discuss the issue with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In response, Doug Smith, Ligado’s chief executive, said in a statement that “the FCC is the expert agency charged by Congress with the exclusive authority to resolve Ligado’s proposal. DOD’s last ditch efforts to interfere with the FCC’s rigorous and exhaustive engineering analysis has nothing to do with science, facts or the law. So that only leaves politics.”

The letter to Trump comes amid renewed focus on 5G technology from key White House administration officials, specifically, from the White House National Economic Council. That office is led by Larry Kudlow, who has expressed interest in the economic benefits of expanding the nation’s 5G capabilities.

Ligado owns a license to operate the spectrum near GPS to build what the firm describes as a 5G network that would boost connectivity for the industrial “internet of things” market. The company uses the SkyTerra-1 satellite, which launched in 2010 and is in geostationary orbit, and it has planned to deploy thousands of terminals to provide connectivity in the continental United States.

Late on April 10, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) officially placed a series of memos sent by the Defense Department on this issue to the FCC’s filing system – memos that had been unreleased until C4ISRNET’s story reported on their contents. In addition, the NTIA associate administrator said in a letter to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai that the organization cannot “reasonably reach” the conclusion that the Pentagon’s concerns have been resolved.

That comment led to a new filing by Ligado on April 12, in which the company blasted the NTIA statement, and the attached notes from the Pentagon, as “simply astounding” and “replete with fearmongering.” The company also argued that the DOD’s conclusions that GPS would be impacted are “based on irrelevant and misleading data,” most notably noting that the Air Force test cited in the service’s memo was based on an older plan the company has since abandoned.

“We’re doing what we can, by the way, on the network side to make sure we have adequate bandwidth to support telework,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said during a March 24 news conference.

In addition, Dana Deasy, the Pentagon’s top IT official, said in a statement to C4ISRNET on March 25 that “as teleworking increases, we are working diligently to advance the capability and capacity of our network posture to support the rise in demand.”

Neither official elaborated on the steps Pentagon leaders are taking.

“In this unprecedented time for our nation, DoD networks remain fully capable of supporting the mission-critical duties necessary to execute our missions,” Deasy said. “We are fully committed to maximizing the use of a telework-ready IT environment to ensure the health and welfare of our personnel given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”

Earlier in March, Lisa Hershman, the Pentagon’s chief management officer, said that the department had been conducting stress tests for telework opportunities.

As more staffers work from home, Pentagon officials have emphasized that every employee should have the network access they need to do their jobs but noted that department leaders have limited applications that stream streaming music and video to free up capacity for mission-critical activities.

In a list of do’s and don’ts distributed throughout the department, leaders also asked workers to avoid social networks and personal shopping on government equipment.

Meanwhile, with more employees working from home, the department’s IT leaders continue to worry about increased vulnerabilities.

“Personnel must practice strong cyber hygiene and operational security awareness while online to ensure the department networks stay secure,” said Lt. Col. Robert Carver, a DoD spokesman. “We have disseminated clear guidance that the same discipline, awareness and security measures required for on-site work must be observed by our personnel when working remotely.”

In fiscal year 2015, the Pentagon spent about $6 billion on classified IT programs. That figure is expected to reach $11.4 billion by fiscal year 2024, according to budget documents released in April.

This year, Defense leaders asked for $10.967 billion, a nearly 10 percent hike in classified spending from fiscal 2019. The larger request comes at a time when the Pentagon’s overall IT budget is shrinking. The department’s request for fiscal 2020 is about $800 million less than the fiscal 2019 request.

During the last decade, the Pentagon has gradually shifted more money into the classified realm. In total, the Pentagon expects classified IT programs would constitute about 26 percent of all DoD IT spending in fiscal 2024. That’s up from about 16 percent in fiscal 2015.

For perspective, the amount of money the Pentagon wants to spend on classified IT is significantly more than any single civilian agency is expected to spend on IT next year.

The government does not include details about classified budget programs, except to say that the money is used to address “cyberspace activities” and other IT initiatives and resources. A spokeswoman for the Department of Defense’s Chief Information Officer declined to offer further information.

However, in the last year, officials from the National Security Agency, Defense Information Systems Agency, U.S. Cyber Command, as well as the under secretaries for intelligence, acquisition and research met with leaders from the Pentagon CIO’s office. Their goal was to use the budget to “significantly improve cyber’s ability” to support the National Defense Strategy and “bolster successful DoD mission execution even in the face of sophisticated cyber adversaries,” according to budget documents from the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation.

Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, the Army’s CIO/G-6, said in an Oct. 8 interview with C4ISRNET that taking advantage of cloud technologies is one of his top priorities in the new fiscal year.

“I want to be able to tell you that I can look in the eyes of the leadership of the Army and say ‘Over the next four years, I want to put 25 percent of your 8,000 existing applications in a cloud-hosted environment. And I created a process that allows us to do that and it’s in support of, and synchronized with, what the DoD is doing with JEDI effort,’ ” Crawford said during the Association of the U.S. Army conference.

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, commonly referred to as JEDI, is a multibillion-dollar initiative to create a departmentwide cloud computing system. Dana Deasy, the department’s chief information officer, is leading the effort. While each of the services already use the cloud to varying degrees, service leaders are working to create a more cohesive approach.

Crawford said he also intends to spend the next year focusing on improving identity management technologies, such as those regularly associated with the common access card, and on ways to help evolve artificial intelligence capabilities. But he expects the cloud, particularly the tactical cloud, to stay atop his to do list.

“What are we going to do in terms of the cloud and way forward,” he asked.

Leaders overseeing the Army’s network modernization, including those from the Army’s Program Executive Office Command Control Communications Tactical and Network Cross Functional Team, have similarly made the tactical cloud a priority. In August, the organizations hosted an industry day in Raleigh, North Carolina, to help better understand how industry could help with the transition to the cloud. In particular, the Army wants to create a common operating environment that would allow soldiers from the command post to the vehicle to dismounted patrol to access the same information and to do so quickly.

Crawford sees a similar value and said a tactical cloud will help make soldiers more mobile.

“Being able to aggregate that data. Not having to take servers to the battlefield with them. Being able to give them the ability to be lighter and more mobile and access that data from anywhere they are on the battlefield. It’s pretty powerful in terms of increasing their mobility,” he said.

Currently, the Army uses several disparate mission command systems that run on their own proprietary systems. The Army’s plan is to shrink their reliance on these systems and instead run them as applications via the cloud.

Moving more applications to cloud-based technologies would allow the Army’s IT teams to get rid of expensive, power-thirsty and often cumbersome infrastructure.

The Army currently has more than 1,000 data centers, essentially the giant server farms that store the information Army soldiers and commanders need. Senior Army leaders have said they want to have fewer than 300 data centers by 2022. To achieve that goal would require a major transition to the cloud.

“With the cloud, do we need those data centers?” Crawford said. “Think of what you can divest.”

The Army currently operates roughly half of the department’s data centers. The service is about one-third of its way toward congressional goals to shutter those centers and instead rely more on the cloud.

Army leaders have listed the characteristics they want from a tactical cloud to include a modernized infrastructure that will help consolidate data repositories, common software and hardware platforms, enterprise systems that will enable tactical public key infrastructure, endpoint security, and a reduction of bandwidth.

Michelli is responsible for coordinating cybersecurity standards, policies and procedures with federal agencies, coalition partners and industry. He spoke recently with C4ISRNET’s Mike Gruss.

C4ISRNET: Tell me about the projects you’ve been working on and how we might measure change in the next year.

THOMAS MICHELLI: The secretary really is focused on near-term, which is the coming year and making sure that the dollars that we’ve gotten and the resources, the people we’ve gotten directly, move the needle.

Some are not new. Identity credentials and access management. How we can more efficiently apply multifactor identification and use that to then ensure segregation of duties and least privilege so that we know that people can only get to where they need to go and only have the access they need to have to get their job done.

C4ISRNET: It helps eliminate insider threat.

MICHELLI: And external threat. All around. We know that if an adversary gets into our network and has credentials and they can move laterally and if we don’t have the right segregation of duties and the right access and attributes, they can pick up additional credentials and just build capability that way.

C4ISRNET: The Defense Information Systems Agency has been working on some prototypes related to identity management. Are there other programs you’re working?

MICHELLI: The common access card is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. We are making it more interoperable with the rest of the federal government. In fact, we reach out now in many of our RFPs to say, “If you have a more effective, innovative way to do multifactor authentication at the right level, we’d love to hear about it.” We know we need to be innovative … to apply the appropriate dollar to the appropriate risk and if industry can come back with an innovative and just as effective multifactor authentication, we’ve taken them and we’re interested in hearing more.

C4ISRNET: What are some of the other areas?

MICHELLI: Comply to Connect is to have as complete a visibility of what’s on our network as possible and to ensure that what connects to our network should be and when it does that it meets our security standards.

We have several pilots, approved concepts, in place. We’re looking to do a more programmatic look on a way that we can replicate a set of solutions across the department.

C4ISRNET: October is National Cybersecurity Month. We’ve seen messages from the secretary emphasizing the importance of cybersecurity. What do you hope that folks get out of these messages and how do you weigh that against threat fatigue?

MICHELLI: You wouldn’t get up without doing certain basic things for your own health and safety and the public would demand these of you. Same thing with cyber. The key bit is culture. It’s not just a thing that the “sixes” or IT staff know about. We need to enculturate people to do this on their own and they realize the efficacy both in the workplace and at home.

We want everybody — not just keyboarders but the users, the contracting shops, our industry partners also — aware that when we spend the taxpayer dollar we want to protect what we’re getting for the taxpayer. We rely on them to do it and they have a responsibility. Not only because of the contract, but it’s good for their business and their employees to be cyber aware and practice it.

C4ISRNET: This year, there’s been an emphasis on cyber for the defense industrial base. Why? What vulnerabilities have you seen from industry?

MICHELLI: We have a defense industrial base form voluntary for people who deal with controlled, unclassified information. The Defense Security Service monitors, audits and helps industry to adhere to those principles. This is important because it can provide intellectual property of that company and our requirements, and perhaps what we can do with what we’re getting from the company. This could be of interest to your adversaries, but also interesting for the security of the economy and our country because some other country can take that work, counterfeit it and use it inappropriately or unlawfully.

We give industry an idea of the threats, hopefully with the intent of saying, “This is in your contract, and this is why it’s important. It’s inherent for all your business practices. This is a threat to your company because somebody could steal that from you and don’t want that to happen, not only for us as a national security interest.”

We’re going to expand the form and do pilots, proof of concepts for smaller companies.

C4ISRNET: How so?

MICHELLI: We have tier one, tier two and tier three companies. Tier one includes the Boeings, Northrop Grummans, Lockheed Martins, General Dynamics, then tier two is the midsize companies and tier three the smaller companies. We’re looking all the way down the food chain.

One of the concerns is the tier one gets it because they can afford to get the experts engaged to comply, but that prime is supposed to ensure that everybody in those tiers can do it as well. We need to ensure that they’re actually following through with that and that tier threes understand the importance of the expense to meet the requirements not only for DoD, but for their other customers.

You’ll see us communicating and engaging the tier twos and tier threes more.

C4ISRNET: Do you envision a time soon where a company would either lose a contract or have it recompeted because their cybersecurity was not up to snuff?

MICHELLI: I could see that happening, yes.

C4ISRNET: That hasn’t happened to date, as far as I know.

MICHELLI: We’ve been doing a lot of carrots; I think you will be seeing some more sticks.

C4ISRNET: Broadly, there’s been a shortage of cyber-qualified workers and there’s been trouble holding onto those you already have. Explain how you make a cyber professional say, “Yes, DoD is a place I want to go and work.”

MICHELLI: Congress has given us what’s called the cyber exceptive workforce. We are just finishing phase one and this enables us to hire faster, directly; it gives us some leeway in compensation both in salary and other mechanisms in compensation. Phase one was U.S. Cyber Command, Joint Force Headquarters-DoDIN, my shop and [Defensive Cyber Operations] cybersecurity. So far, we have filled 403 positions out of many thousands. We’re learning. We’re going into phase two, which will be about 8,000 positions.

C4ISRNET: When you say many thousands, those are already filled … they’re not vacancies?

MICHELLI: They’re not vacancies. They can be both encumbered with people or they could be vacancies.

C4ISRNET: The position itself has been reclassified.

MICHELLI: Correct. Phase one is done. Phase two is starting. It’s a little over 8,400 positions. And this is the DISA and service cyber components. We’re learning how not only to identify, but also going out and hiring using these authorities. Cyber Command held a cyber fair in partnership with Air Force and DoD CIO this past May. We had over 900 preregistered candidates and 400 candidates showed up as walk-ins — so it’s about 1,300 people. We hired 17 on the spot.

And there were quick follow-ups with others. My understanding is we’re going to expand that to other parts of federal government who also have cyber exceptive workforces.

C4ISRNET: How do you get them in the door?

MICHELLI: We go out and we tell them all the things they can do within government that they can’t do in industry.

Once we get them in and get them trained, another thing we’re looking at is how we ensure that they have a full, satisfying career. Today, we make them go be a logistician somewhere and they say, “I don’t want to do that, I want to do what I’m doing here.” That drives them to get out. So how do we retain them once they’ve got a taste and realize how exciting and how interesting and fulfilling it is? How do we retain them? The military departments are looking at how we are able to give them a full lifetime career track in doing the things they love.

Another thing is the new NDAA. If we have somebody who is renowned in their field and we want to bring them in any leadership position in cyber, there will be abilities to do that.

C4ISRNET: The Pentagon recently announced the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. How do JAIC and cybersecurity overlap, if at all?

MICHELLI: They overlap greatly. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are really the only ways we’re going to over-match our adversaries on a day-to-day basis. We’re not sure, however, which projects will go under JAIC initially.

We are continually looking at machine learning and artificial intelligence. For example, emails. How do we automatically adjust filters? How do we get ahead so we’re not relying on signatures that we already know? An analyst sits in front of a [subscriber identity module] tool or some other tool looking at behavior on the network. It’s just millions of events. So how do we winnow them down so that only the ones that really need the analysts’ gray cells focus and the best value for their time … the only way we’re going to be able to do that is machine learning.

Those are the characteristics that a panel of federal and industry representatives said they value in hiring cyber workers during the CyberCon 2017 conference held Nov. 28.

Finding and training workers versed in cybersecurity has long been sticking point for federal agencies. According to an April 2017 report from the Government Accountability Office, the federal government needs to hire more than 7,500 workers in those areas.

But members of the CyberCon panel said there have always been more empty seats than qualified people to fill their jobs. Instead, with the rapid pace of change in the industry, employers want to hire workers who demonstrate specific characteristics, rather than those who come only with technical skill sets.

“You can’t be inside the box,” said Harry Wingo, a faculty member at the college of information and cyberspace at the National Defense University. Wingo once managed a program to help Google hire more military veterans. “You have to have the confidence to advise that combatant commander and say, ‘That’s the way to go.’”

Workers also need to be able to adjust on the fly.

“When the attack vectors change, they can change with it,” said Deborah Pierre-Louis, the director of the State Department’s office of policy, liaison and training.

But none of the workforce issues facing cyber leaders will change overnight, or even in a few short years. Hiring is just part of the solution, said Trent Teyema, chief of cyber readiness at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“We’re not going to hire our way out of this,” he said.

Teyema pointed to two strategies the FBI has used to bolster its staffing. First, the agency has worked to ensure employees are in the room for more personalized training and not just watching virtual sessions. Secondly, the intelligence agency has specifically targeted high school and college students for internships and eventual full-time jobs.

Finally, experts such as Joey Muniz, a technical solutions architect for Cisco, said employers need to incentivize good behavior and should not be above shaming employees for inadvertently dangerous acts.

For example, Muniz pointed to a “wall of shame” at Cisco for users who click on fake phishing emails. By calling out those users, Muniz said, companies and agencies can tangibly show employees how their actions could lead to additional expenses, providing a valuable lesson in the process.