Shipmates,
I expect this post will prompt some comments and may dive into the discussion. Our good friend VADM Nancy Brown, the Joint Staff J-6 (CIO) , offers the following post.
ADM A
Cyberspace is the New Frontier -- Guest Post by VADM Nancy Brown, Director, J6, Joint Staff
One of the significant actions that took place in 2008 was that DoD declared Cyberspace a warfighting domain. Along with this designation came several challenges, not the least of which is how we maintain freedom of access and movement in a domain that is heavily contested. We know we face sophisticated adversaries in this domain and that they have the same tools as we do. So how do we design a security framework that enhances our freedom of movement rather than restricting it, one that promotes agility and one that takes advantage of the potential power that this domain promises. We must transform how we treat our network from an administrative instrument to that of a multi-mission system capable of operating in both friendly and contested environments. We must learn how to operate within cyberspace to achieve our national objectives, while recognizing that others operate in cyberspace as well. We successfully operate in the littorals and on the open ocean today because we have made it a point to purposely operate in these waters and not keep our ships in port. Likewise, we need to operate within cyberspace to be an influential element within the domain. It is time that we learn to leverage the web 2.0 tools to our advantage and not shun them as simply the play tools of the young. The answers are not just technical but are more about changing our culture and building trust.
The Joint Staff is actively using Web 2.0 tools to help us accomplish our mission. When we first started using these tools to make ourselves more effective, we found that there were some disagreements over the security of using the tools versus the benefits to be gained from them; we ran into the Cold War mentality that "nothing could be released, until it had been cleared for release." And we continually are faced with the fear that the internet is a dangerous place and so the risk to our networks is too great for us to move freely within. Nevertheless, we chose to begin using them to fully determine the benefits and observe the vulnerabilities associated with their use. We have found that the largest threats to using these tools effectively is not the loss of sensitive data, or the potential for infection, but the lost benefit and cost associated with not sharing information and collaborating. In a world where Cyber is a warfighting domain, we have learned that the "responsibility to share" information demands that we understand the risk, mitigate it and not allow ourselves to overly restrict our movement or access.
Social networking tools provide capabilities that will revolutionize the way we do business. If we make our networks garrisons with impenetrable security boundaries we are denying ourselves a valuable resource that we should embrace. We live in a new world of blogs, wikis, myspace, facebook, google, etc; if we secure ourselves in garrison we will become irrelevant. This world is about not accepting the way we have always done business but building on the power of Web 2.0 and 3.0 and embracing the limitless capabilities they promise.
Every time we have been faced with a new dimension to our operations, we have learned how to change our tactics to succeed, cyberspace requires the same shift from old think to ensure that we gain and maintain the information advantage that we need to win in this environment. Like any advance in technology, either we will become proficient in its use, or our adversaries will.
In the end, we have decided that the benefit from properly using these tools outweighs the risk.
VADM Nancy Brown
