“We’re going to turn that off unless you secured that properly. Whoa! That’s a very different mindset,” Col. Straub told me. “The availability of the network versus the defense of the network, that’s something we’re trying to get commanders to think about.”

WASHINGTON: Under relentless grilling from Democratic senators, the four-star officer who heads both Cyber Command and the NSA said the US government is “not doing enough” to prevent Russia from meddling in the 2018 elections. Could the US keep the Russians from interfering again? asked Sen. Claire McCaskill. “Yes,” Adm. Michael Rogers said at once.… Keep reading →

SAN DIEGO: Adm. Mike Rogers, who heads both NSA and Cyber Command, is looking past CYBERCOM’s elevation to an independent Unified Command towards a much wider reorganization of military cyber. Some reorganization is implicit in a Feb. 17 memo in which Defense Secretary Jim Mattis charges Deputy Secretary Bob Work to “develop an initial plan…… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: No one really knows what they’re doing in cyberspace: It’s all too new and it changes too fast. So it was refreshing — if unnerving — for two top intelligence officials to admit this morning that the US government’s lack of clarity makes it more difficult both to deter adversaries’ cyber operations and to conduct… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: When Iran hacked the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet in fall 2013, it shook up the sea services’ approach to cybersecurity. Thanks to that new vigilance, their networks have fended off every subsequent attack, the head of Navy Cyber Command said today. That doesn’t mean no one breached any portion of any Navy or Marine Corps… Keep reading →

A high-level cybersecurity task force will present its plan to the Chief of Naval Operations sometime tomorrow. Called CYBERSAFE (one word, all caps), the initiative is intended to overhaul information technology in the comprehensive way the SUBSAFE instruction overhauled all submarine safety after the USS Thresher disaster. Fixing up IT procurement, though, is just one step towards a larger… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: “One of the things I try to tell the work force out there is this is not what is going to define us,” said Adm. Mike Rogers, new head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command. After two months in the job — and halfway through this morning’s Q&A at a Bloomberg Government… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Vice Adm. Michael Rogers

WASHINGTON: What homemade roadside bombs could do to Army and Marine ground vehicles was the ugly surprise of the last decade. What sophisticated long-range missiles could do to Navy aircraft carriers could be the ugly surprise of the next. “I think it would almost follow like the night to the day,” Rep. Randy Forbes told… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The four service cyber commands want to move personnel and resources from routine network operations — the classic IT jobs — to online attack and defense executed with a “warrior” mentality, their senior officers told Congress yesterday afternoon. Increasingly “these men and women view themselves as warriors,” Vice Admiral Michael Rogers, chief of… Keep reading →