The evolving cyber battlefield was the main focus of this yr’s TechNet Cyber occasion. With a theme of “Outpacing the Menace: Align, Adapt, Speed up,” the occasion enabled navy officers and business leaders to share insights on the position GovCon can play in assembly missions usually and cybersecurity particularly. Hosted by AFCEA, the occasion brings collectively consultants in digital coverage, technique, operations, and communications.
Working June 25-27 on the Baltimore Conference Heart in Maryland, the occasion attracted 350 exhibitors and 1000’s of attendees from the Protection Info Methods Company (DISA), Division of Protection (DOD), U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), and business to debate how expertise can finest assist and defend in right this moment’s panorama.
AI
AI is quick changing into part of each facet of life, and one in every of its most necessary makes use of is in cyber protection.
As an illustration, the expertise could make DOD networks extra environment friendly and efficient at figuring out potential intrusions from China-sponsored assaults, mentioned Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, DISA director, and commander of the Joint Pressure Headquarters-DOD Info Community. He pointed to Chinese language efforts to disrupt core DOD capabilities.
“They’re analyzing our methods and our plans,” Skinner mentioned. “They’re targeted on disrupting our important infrastructure, focusing on our important infrastructure, making {that a} focus space, and they’re finding out intimately our nationwide and our DOD technique.”
Because of this, protection companies should take a look at methods to make use of “AI to sift via all the information that we’ve got from all of the sensors that we’ve got throughout the division and actually perceive what the chance is for an adversary in your community, or has an adversary laterally moved throughout your community?” he added.
Brian Hermann, cybersecurity and analytics director at DISA, mentioned that the division has a aim of automating 75% of its administrative cyber capabilities to have the ability to sustain with protection demand.
“Our information analytics staff has been creating an information lake structure that enables us to have the information the place it’s primarily created,” Hermann mentioned. “If you concentrate on this, it connects again to the DOD cloud technique [Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability]. We now have 4 major cloud service suppliers underneath [JWCC] and so we’re creating the lake of knowledge within the atmosphere the place the cybersecurity instruments are offering, so it’s not going to generate a whole lot of exfiltration prices or transition prices.”
One case research of how DOD is utilizing AI in cyber protection already is Cyber Command’s work with the Nationwide Safety Company’s AI Safety Heart. The command additionally has an AI Job Pressure to assist operations transfer from “opportunistic purposes to systemic adoption,” mentioned Gen. Timothy Haugh, commander of CYBERCOM, director of NSA, and director of the Central Safety Service.
“At Cyber Command and NSA, we’ve got two lenses once we speak AI: cybersecurity for AI and AI for cybersecurity,” Haugh mentioned. “We should discover ways to defend our nation’s aggressive benefit in AI from overseas cyberattacks, and rapidly operationalize the means to take action, whereas additionally exploring how we will leverage AI to reinforce the complete spectrum of our cybersecurity capabilities.”
Significance of business companions
Haugh and Skinner additionally issued warnings to the protection industrial base (DIB) concerning the menace from China.
“We understand that cybersecurity is just not the highest precedence for most of the corporations throughout the protection industrial base,” Haugh mentioned. “These corporations and entities deal with manufacturing, innovating, and creating the instruments that win this nation’s wars. That is the place our partnership provides worth. The DIB should improve its cybersecurity, and the Cyber Command and NSA staff are prepared and keen companions to help you.”
Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, commanding common of Military Cyber Command, mentioned that some large corporations, reminiscent of Microsoft, have already been attacked by Volt Storm, a Chinese language cyber espionage group. Which means small DIB companies are particularly weak, she famous.
“There are a selection of initiatives underway, pilots… how are you going to affordably give a small enterprise associate a digital atmosphere to do Military enterprise?” Barrett mentioned. “It’s too complicated for them to do it themselves.”
Quantum
One other expertise that protection officers are retaining a detailed eye on is quantum computing. Nonetheless in its infancy, quantum has the potential for highly effective capabilities that can be utilized for good or evil.
“Quantum computing goes to be a sport changer,” mentioned Cedric Terry, chief of the Encryption Manufacturing and Options Group at NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate. “It’s actually, actually going to only change the best way that we take a look at encryption and the cryptographic ecosystem. And though it’s a sport changer for us, it additionally presents a menace. Within the incorrect arms of an adversary with intentions to do us hurt, cryptographically related quantum computer systems have the potential to interrupt current public keys, we all know it.”
He urged business to start out planning now for the probabilities that quantum provides in order that protection can stay on the leading edge.
Contemplating the pace at which each threats and responses change, there’s lots to get enthusiastic about earlier than TechNet Cyber 2025.