U.S. Air Force CIO on Cyber Attacks: “This is our Achilles heel.”

Last Updated on Sunday, 21 December 2008 01:31 Written by admin Wednesday, 3 December 2008 07:20

Lt. Gen. Michael Peterson is the USAF’s Chief Information Officer. He’s clearly not enthused about the current state of our cyber readiness.

“There’s too much fighting about cyber — how big [a concern] it is, who owns it,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Peterson, chief information officer at the Air Force, during a keynote at Air Force IT Day, sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association of Northern Virginia.

“This is our Achilles’ heel,” he said. “It’s not about a denial-of-service attack; it’s about the information on the network — ensuring it’s accurate, protected, and available. [But] we’re still fighting over what patch to put on.”

To his credit, Peterson went on to discuss the importance of Information Security, which is a vital part of any Cyber strategy.

To combat cyberattacks, information security needs to become more pervasive across agencies and across government, Peterson said. Too often it is managed separately from other operations, he said, but an enterprisewide approach is necessary to ensure that daily processes that traditionally receive less oversight do not introduce security vulnerabilities. Standards should be engrained across all disciplines, he added.

“Good security practices are not just good security practices,” he said. “They’re required security practices … This is too important to not [be] embraced in the broadest view possible.”

Peterson said the incoming administration is well aware of the threat, noting he plans to brief the transition team about cybersecurity later in the afternoon. President-elect Barack Obama has already met with John Grimes, chief information officer and assistant secretary of networks and information infrastructure at the Defense Department.

Read the full article at NextGov.com.

The USAF offers $50M for Cyber Research. We could do it for a lot less.

Last Updated on Sunday, 26 October 2008 07:47 Written by admin Sunday, 26 October 2008 07:47

A new US Air Force Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) offers approximately $49.9 million dollars between 2009 and 2012 for research papers that address the following topic description:

Proactively defend cyberspace by anticipating and avoiding threats through understanding the cyber situation, predicting adversarial actions, assessing potential impacts, and by implementing deterrence and effects based defensive methodologies. Detect and defeat threats and protect information systems by engagement and influence through defensive mechanisms employing such methods as adversary denial and deception. Adaptively maintain, organize, and automatically regenerate and reconstitute resources to ensure continued mission operations.

Considering the world-wide financial crisis that’s going on, perhaps some of my readers who are inside the Beltway will let the “powers-that-be” know that the Project Grey Goose team could do a better job faster, and for a LOT less. 

Just FYI.

“Cyber can potentially be a weapon of mass disruption” – General William Lord

Last Updated on Saturday, 18 October 2008 10:35 Written by admin Saturday, 18 October 2008 10:35

Boy, was I happy to read this quote by USAF General William Lord in Aviation Week this morning:

Lord also referred to what he called “cross-domain synergies,” or the ability to use both kinetic and non-kinetic weapons “in concert, more efficiently. The bottom line is about changing enemy behavior,” which doesn’t necessarily have to result in total destruction. “Now you can have a more gradual and perhaps different kind of warfare where both a potential belligerent and another nation are not killing and maiming people” to effect change, Lord said.

“Cyber can potentially be a weapon of mass disruption.”

Exactly.