14 DAY TRIAL // Experts from the US Department of Defense (DOD), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) took part at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee where the cyber capabilities of the Pentagon were debated.
DARPA Acting Director Kaigham J. Gabriel has revealed that the DOD lacks the proper resources both in the cyber offensive and the cyber defensive sectors.
He admitted that attackers could at any time penetrate the DOD’s networks, but he and his colleagues are aware that the situation needs to be changed.
“Our approach to cybersecurity is dominated by a strategy that layers security onto a uniform architecture. This approach … is not convergent with a growing and evolving threat. That’s the defensive picture,” Gabriel said.
“The tasks required for military purposes are sufficiently different that we cannot simply scale intelligence-based cyber capabilities and adequately serve the needs of DOD.”
He exemplified by saying that an exploit which can cause a machine to crash on command may be highly effective in certain missions of the Department, even though it’s “not much of an intelligence exploit.”
Zachary J. Lemnios, assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering, is confident that in order to stay ahead of the threat, the DOD must continually improve its capabilities.
“We're moving to a point where no longer will we be looking for particular attacks, but we will be designing systems on the commercial side that morph automatically -- actually change their features and operating roles to respond to threats before the threats present themselves,” Lemnios explained.
The hearing once again brought up discussions on the recruiting of cyber talent. Currently, the DOD has several programs meant to attract high school and college students to the white side of cyber security and DARPA initiated a program called Cyber Fast Track, which brings together experts an innovators from the white hat hacker community.
“Half of our so-called cyberpunks -- the group of about a half a dozen or eight program managers at DARPA -- don't have PhDs. Their skills, their capabilities, their insights are coming from their practice in the community. And frankly, it will have a shelf life,” Gabriel added.