USA — Air Force Takes Steps to Defend Cyber Domain

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2010 — Com­put­er net­works can do a lot of things. They can turn your neighbor’s kid into a viral video phe­nom­e­non, they can let you know you’re about to miss your con­nec­tion in Atlanta, and they can be a line of defense in pro­tect­ing nation­al assets.

Maj. Gen. Michael J. Basla, vice com­man­der of Air Force Space Com­mand at Peter­son Air Force Base, Colo., is con­cerned with the latter. 

In a “DOD Live” blog­gers round­table yes­ter­day, Basla dis­cussed the Air Force’s cyber­space mis­sion, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and the train­ing and edu­ca­tion the Air Force is pro­vid­ing to air­men in the field. 

Basla said the Air Force’s mis­sion empha­sizes mis­sion assur­ance: how to con­duct oper­a­tions in, to and from cyber­space and how to react as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to emerg­ing threats.

“There’s a great threat to Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty out there in the cyber­space domain, and it’s real, it’s sig­nif­i­cant, it’s per­sis­tent, and we are under attack every day,” Basla said. 

The defense of our net­works is essen­tial for us to con­duct all kinds of day-to-day activ­i­ties — in the com­mer­cial sec­tor, in the pub­lic sec­tor, in the mil­i­tary sector. 

“So the Depart­ment of Defense rec­og­nized this,” he con­tin­ued, “and as the Depart­ment of Defense does, they said we need to have a capa­bil­i­ty organ­ic to our Depart­ment of Defense so that we could car­ry out any­thing our gov­ern­ment might ask us to do in the defense of our networks.” 

The gen­er­al said the Air Force looked at its core capa­bil­i­ties — relat­ed to speed, access and dis­tance –- and deter­mined how to best meet the Defense Department’s require­ment to defeat threats from cyber­space. That starts with teach­ing new offi­cers and enlist­ed air­men how to fight on the dig­i­tal bat­tle­field, Basla said. 

The Air Force is rec­on­cil­ing that need with the require­ments of the job. Basla said 100 per­cent of the service’s orig­i­nal cyber­space offi­cers had to have tech­ni­cal degrees before being admit­ted to the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty pro­gram. Now, only about 80 per­cent need them. 

“We want­ed to have tech, math, sci­ence, and engi­neer­ing degrees, but we were advised that there are some folks that could come from the social sci­ences that could con­tribute — you know, some­thing about look­ing at the prob­lem a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly,” he said. “So we’ve allowed for some exceptions.” 

Inter­est in the field has increased gen­er­al­ly, he said, because the young peo­ple enlist­ing and enrolling at the Air Force Acad­e­my have grown up with com­put­ers, at least in their schools. 

“There’s a great deal of inter­est, I will tell you, and that’s the encour­ag­ing thing,” he said. Poten­tial cyber air­men “want to under­stand what their respon­si­bil­i­ties will be, and how they can get involved,” he added. “And so I’m encour­aged about that.” 

Part of his encour­age­ment is relat­ed to the preva­lence of com­put­ing –- though most recruits come to the Air Force with work­ing knowl­edge of com­put­er sys­tems, many don’t under­stand the risks asso­ci­at­ed, such as phish­ing scams and virus attacks. Basic train­ing at Lack­land Air Force Base in Texas now includes two sec­tions on being a good “cyber wing­man” and tak­ing care of the net­work, and the Air Force Acad­e­my now offers a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty major. 

“It’s hands-on lab work. It’s ‘red ver­sus blue forces’ exer­cis­es. It is instruc­tion. It is class­room work,” he said. 

The increased capa­bil­i­ties, though, come with an increased demand for peo­ple. The Air Force plans to bring in 220 peo­ple under a new Air Force spe­cial­ty code, and Air Force schools will grad­u­ate anoth­er 50 cyber spe­cial­ists yearly. 

“As I talk to the folks in the field and we get feed­back from the com­bat­ant com­mands that are now start­ing to under­stand that cyber­space brings anoth­er aspect of warfight­ing capa­bil­i­ty to the fight, some of the things that we are hear­ing are that we want more of these,” he said. 

Inte­grat­ing the new spe­cial­ty — a con­sol­i­da­tion of 11 oth­er spe­cial­ties includ­ing air­field sys­tems main­tain­ers, net­work oper­a­tors and infor­ma­tion man­agers — into plan­ning and exe­cu­tion cycles still a work in progress, Basla said. He point­ed out that the cyber field has two sides. 

“When you look inside of that spe­cial­ty — and cer­tain­ly that spe­cial­ty includes these ‘3‑Deltas’ — there are two pieces to that pic­ture,” he said. “The one piece is the tech­ni­cal experts who help devel­op and cre­ate and sus­tain that cyber­space domain that we’ve been talk­ing about. And then there’s anoth­er com­po­nent of that pic­ture that are the oper­a­tors that oper­ate inside that domain that was just created.” 

One group is made up of peo­ple who are facil­i­ta­tors and main­tain­ers of net­works, he explained, and the oth­er is made up of those with oper­a­tional capabilities. 

He said today’s prob­lems regard­ing net­work oper­a­tions and secu­ri­ty are dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from those of the past, and that cre­ates the need for both oper­a­tors and facilitators.

In the past, a blink­ing light meant a net­work inter­rup­tion need­ed fix­ing. Now, that blink­ing light could sig­ni­fy an attack, rather than the need for a rou­tine repair. 

“Today, the oper­a­tor must say first, ‘Is there some adver­sary that is get­ting into my net­works that is try­ing to inter­rupt my mis­sion assur­ance capa­bil­i­ties?’ So that’s the dif­fer­ence, and we need both,” he said. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →