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DoD Cyberspace Strategy: Is the DoD really ready to embrace new technologies & companies???

July 20, 2011 at 8:09 am, by Toney Jennings

As a former Air Force information warfare officer, and a member of the military’s red and blue teams for many years, I believe the Department of Defense’s new “Strategy for Operating in Cyber-Space” is a small step towards developing a security plan for protecting our nation from cyber attacks. What leaves me a little perplexed, however, are the realities the DoD is up against in achieving the five strategic initiatives that have been outlined in the document.

As I was going through the plan, what struck me first was the fact that the U.S. has publicly called out to the world that cyberspace will be added as one of the operational domains, retaliating to any attacks against it in the same way it would to attacks by land, sea, air and space. Saying that it plans to aggressively train, organize, collaborate, and strengthen relationships with global partners sends a strong message to the international community about its intentions to take full advantage of cyberspace’s potential, as well as how the government plans to deal with and respond to threats against this domain. While the plan still leaves many questions around attribution and countermeasures against any such attack, I think the clear and unambiguous addition of the domain is an important step to deter cyber attacks targeting the U.S. government and our nation’s critical assets and infrastructure. Continue reading this post…

McAfee raises the white flag for reactive security… Is whitelisting the answer?

August 18, 2010 at 12:30 pm, by Toney Jennings

The white flag is a universal symbol of truce, a ceasefire if you will. In war, or in this case the war against cybercrime, McAfee this week issued a sort of truce with its call to arms for the security industry to take the offensive against malware attacks. This action speaks volumes about the current state of the security industry. And we couldn’t agree more. If one of the world’s leading antivirus security software makers is saying that the cat-and-mouse game of trying to keep up with the record amount of malware seen in the first half of 2010 is not working, then we all need to sit up and listen. Continue reading this post…

Repercussions, not legislation, key to improving nation’s cyber defenses

April 7, 2010 at 10:52 am, by Toney Jennings

In Monday’s blog, “Why Rockefeller-Snowe’s Regulations Won’t Prepare The U.S. For Cyberwar,” security expert Richard Stiennon provides a straightforward analysis of why we can’t effectively regulate cyber security. In a nutshell, passing a new cyber security bill would do nothing to better prepare us for cyber attacks. What we need to do is beef up our defenses with accepted security practices. I couldn’t agree more.

Historically, legislation has proven to be woefully inadequate in preparing the U.S. for cyberwar. Why? Because there are no consequences. Continue reading this post…

Are we in a cyberwar or not?

March 11, 2010 at 11:16 am, by Toney Jennings

I continue to hear various viewpoints about whether or not we are in a cyberwar. Recently, our friend, Howard Schmidt was quoted in the article, “White House Cyber Czar: ‘We are not in a cyberwar’,” that we are not in a cyberwar. His stance is cyberwar is “a terrible metaphor” where there are no winners. While I can certainly respect that, there are also a number of opposing views and supporting statistics that say otherwise.

One comes from the former director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, who recently testified in Congress by saying the country is already in the midst of a cyberwar — and losing it at that. This comes on the heels of growing speculation from experts that say the Chinese government was behind the recent cyberattacks targeting U.S. government Web sites, Google, and dozens of other U.S. companies. This, of course, raises the question: “If we aren’t already in a cyberwar, are we headed toward one?”

Larry Wortzel, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said in the article, “Expert says Chinese government likely behind massive cyberattacks,” that whether the Chinese government or independent hackers in China were responsible for the recent attacks, we are seeing “persistent, systematic and sophisticated attacks” that are clearly targeting U.S. military, technical and scientific information. Similar trends released at RSA Conference and reported in the story, “Chinese hacks attacks said likely to recur,” said an increase in Internet attacks from China could double if the pace during the first two months of 2010 continues.

People often ask me, given my military background and experience fighting cyber crime, are we in a cyberwar or not? To me, whether or not we are is irrelevant. What defines cyber warfare? What’s important is that we are aware of what is going on and our government and the private sector are doing everything they can to ensure our cyber security. I commended President Obama last October when he said that cyber threats were one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation. The fact is, cyber crime has already cost U.S. companies billions of dollars. If these trends aren’t stopped, cyber crime will continue to have a growing impact on both our economy and global competitiveness.

Ensuring our cyber security comes down to one thing — preparedness. The more we understand, and the more proactive steps the government and private sector take independently and collectively, are vital to defending our networks, national assets and critical infrastructures from any type of attack, whether we are in a cyberwar or not.