WASHINGTON — To stay at the cutting edge of technology and ahead of budding adversaries, U.S. Cyber Command is trying to increase its partnership with the commercial technology sector. In an article published in Foreign Affairs on Aug. 25, Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, and Michael Sulmeyer, senior adviser to the commander, argued that partnering with the government is not only necessary for success in cyberspace, but is mutually beneficial. “Given that some of the most innovative thinking today is happening in the offices of American tech companies, we would be shortsighted if we […]
Cyber Command
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WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Defense Department matures its cyber force and training, it wants greater visibility over the readiness of its teams and a more realistic training environment that replicates the entirety of the internet, including social media. These two areas were the focus of the latest industry day for the Persistent Cyber Training Environment, or PCTE, which is U.S. Cyber Command’s online client that allows worldwide cyber mission force teams to connect and conduct individual and team training as well as mission rehearsal. The Army is running the program on behalf of Cyber Command and the joint cyber force. […]
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s virtual cyber-training platform has been successfully integrated with operational tools that will be used during missions, according to Col. Tanya Trout, the outgoing director of the Joint Cyber Training Enterprise. The Persistent Cyber Training Environment, or PCTE, is an online client that allows U.S. Cyber Command’s warriors to log on from anywhere in the world to conduct individual or collective cyber training as well as mission rehearsal on par with the National Training Center, which did not previously exist for cyber warriors. The Army runs the program on behalf of the joint cyber force and Cyber Command. […]
WASHINGTON — The U.S. needs to coordinate with the international community in identifying and punishing those behind cyberattacks to deter future hacks, according to a co-chair of the Cyber Solarium Commission. In testimony before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities, Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, called for a two-pronged approach to deter cyber-based espionage operations, attempts to disrupt U.S. banks, and widespread online influence campaigns. His recommendation included increased international cooperation to call out and punish such activities, and for the U.S. to create a stronger declaratory policy. The Cyber Solarium Commission, a bipartisan organization created […]
WASHINGTON — The Air Force is ensuring its mission essential cyber training goes on during the global COVID-19 pandemic but officials are also delaying some training related to the service’s networks. “When all this kicked off, we prioritized all of the mission essential courses that are supplying operators to the cyber mission force. We wanted to make sure that those units continue to get the trained operations that they needed so that their readiness levels didn’t suffer,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Williams, commander of the 39th Information Operations Squadron, which provides intermediate cyber weapons system training to airmen, told C4ISRNET. The cyber […]
The Pentagon is trying to determine how its two newest space entities – Space Command and Space Force – will fit into the Department of Defense’s cyber architecture. There are no plans – or subsequent authorities – for Space Force to provide personnel to the cyber mission force, which feeds up to U.S. Cyber Command, a Space Force spokesperson told C4ISRNET. The way the cyber force is staffed within the Defense Department is that each of the services are responsible for providing a set number of teams – offensive, defensive and intelligence/support teams – to the joint cyber mission force. In […]
One of the clearest examples of how the military wants to defeat adversaries using information warfare is by publicly disclosing what those enemies have been doing and what capabilities they have. Information warfare can be abstract, combining cyber, intelligence, electronic warfare, information operations, psychological operations or military deception as a way to influence the information environment or change the way an adversary think. “At our level, the most important thing we can do is to be able to expose what an adversary is doing that we consider to be malign activity, in a way that allows that to be put in […]
The Air Force is realigning the cyber mission force teams it provides to U.S. Cyber Command as a way to have intelligence personnel work more closely with cyber operators. In the past, Air Forces Cyber was made up of cyber and intelligence personnel from 24th Air Force and 25th Air Force, respectively. However, the arrangement created difficulties with command relationships and oversight of teams since the intelligence operators served beneath a separate Air Force command with a separate commander. But in October, the Air Force decided to merge 24th and 25th Air Force into 16th Air Force/Air Forces Cyber, placing cyber, […]
A U.S. Cyber Command official said that when they examine whether any given operation or even when a strategy has been successful, they’re not looking at metrics, but rather outcomes. “It’s really about: have we enabled the collective defense of the nation,” Maj. Gen. John Morrison, Cyber Command’s outgoing chief of staff, told C4ISRNET in a July interview. Roughly two years ago, Cyber Command and the Department of Defense started a paradigm shift for cyber policy and operations. The 2018 DoD cyber strategy tasked Cyber Command to “defend forward,” which is best described as operators working on foreign networks to prevent […]
U.S. Cyber Command’s new training platform is slated to deliver the second iteration this fall providing additional capabilities and user capacity, program officials said. The Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE) is an online client that allows Cyber Command’s warriors to log on from anywhere in the world to conduct individual or collective cyber training as well as mission rehearsal. The program is being run by the Army on behalf of the joint cyber force and Cyber Command. Officials delivered the first version of the program to Cyber Command in February and the environment was used for the first time in Cyber […]
The Senate Armed Services Committee is concerned there isn’t sufficient oversight over U.S. Cyber Command’s capability and platform development. In the report accompanying the committee’s markup of the annual defense policy bill, it articulates issues with the command’s Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture, or JCWA, which guides capability development priorities. The architecture is broken into five categories: Common firing platforms to be used at the four cyber operating locations of the service cyber components. These platforms will be worked into a comprehensive suite of cyber tools. Unified Platform, which will integrate and analyze data from offensive and defensive operations with partners. Joint […]
The Senate Armed Services Committee is taking aim at an Army cyber program by effectively taking away funding, arguing the effort is redundant when compared to another program under development for Cyber Command and the joint cyber force. The Army’s program, Cyber Situational Understanding, or Cyber SU, aims to allow commanders not only to visualize but also understand the cyber environment within their battlespace. It’s to be included in the Command Post Computing Environment, a web-enabled system that will consolidate current mission systems and programs into a single-user interface. Research Innovation Inc. was awarded a $21 million contract in April for […]
At air bases across Europe, networks are under attack. Malicious hackers have gained access to sensitive systems, information, controls and critical infrastructure. But cyber operators from U.S. Cyber Command, in concert with Five Eyes partners, have been called in to thwart these attempts in real time. This was the main scenario for this year’s capstone cyber training exercise put on by Cyber Command, Cyber Flag 20-2. The exercise, which took place June 15-26 and was exclusively defensive in nature, saw more than 500 participants and 17 teams participating from five countries across nine time zones, and it included America’s National Guard, […]
The Senate Armed Services Committee is asking the Department of Defense for greater clarity and formalization of its cyber operations. In its version of the annual defense policy bill — which passed the committee last week, though full text of the language was only made public this week — the committee takes aim at U.S. Cyber Command’s so-called hunt forward operations. Hunt forward operations involve teams from Cyber Command physically deploying to other nations to assist them with cyber defense. These operations provide American cyber teams insight into tactics that could be turned against U.S. networks or used to disrupt the […]
A House Armed Services Committee draft of the annual defense policy bill calls for the National Guard and Reserve components to assist in defending the nation in cyberspace. A provision in the bill’s markup from the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities, which passed the committee June 22, requires a review of statues and rules that pertain to the use of the National Guard for response and recovery from significant cyberattacks. The bill defines a cyber incident as significant if the event results in demonstrable harm to the national security interests or economy of the United States and the […]
The Defense Department’s information warfare leaders want to know what they can learn from U.S. Cyber Command’s online offensive against the ISIS. Defense officials have been applying lessons learned in combat to the hotly contested information space. To date, this process has involved a variety of reorganization efforts across the services, but the approach is changing. One starting point includes Joint Task Force-Ares — U.S. Cyber Command’s online offensive against the Islamic State group — and its Operation Glowing Symphony, the command’s largest and most complex operation. That operation targeted ISIS media and online operations, taking out infrastructure and preventing ISIS […]
U.S. Cyber Command’s annual training exercise will rely entirely on a new platform this year, a move that will allow most participants to compete remotely. This year’s Cyber Flag exercise, which began June 15, will use the Persistent Cyber Training Environment, which has been described as one of the Department of Defense’s most critical projects. “We are actually getting ready to do Cyber Flag … in PCTE for the first time at a geographically dispersed event,” Col. Tanya Trout, Cyber Command’s PCTE director, said during a webcast hosted by SANS June 5. PCTE is an online client that allows Cyber Command’s […]
The Senate Armed Services Committee wants to add new responsibilities to the Pentagon’s Principal Cyber Advisor as part of a broader effort to ensure cyber forces can meet new challenges. The committee released a summary June 11 of the annual defense policy bill for fiscal year 2021. The bill, which passed the committee June 10, also adopts several recommendations made by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, a bipartisan organization created in 2019 to develop a multipronged U.S. cyber strategy. Among items the panel approved is giving the Principal Cyber Advisor more responsibility related to integration and coordination to ensure that DoD’s cyber […]
A new portal created by U.S. Cyber Command and the National Guard provides a two-way interface for sharing malware and gain better insights into cyber threats facing the nation, according to a June 9 release from the command. This portal, called Cyber 9-Line, allows participating Guard units from their perspective states to quickly share incidents with Cyber Command. Cyber Command’s elite Cyber National Mission Force, which conducts operations aimed at disrupting specific nation state actors, is then able to provide analysis on the malware and offer feedback to the states to help redress the incident. “This level of cooperation and feedback […]