Pentagon Working To Overhaul Cybersecurity Protocol

Earlier this year, the Pentagon's Director of Operations Test and Evaluation Michael Gilmore said that his testing revealed that nearly all of the Pentagon's weapons systems were vulnerable to a cybersecurity attack. The warning came as President Barack Obama stepped up his efforts to improve government security and fight off the increasing number of hacking attacks coming out of Russia and China.

One of the main concerns for the Pentagon, however, has been that with so many weaknesses, it is difficult to prioritize limited resources in order to make the most meaningful repairs.

Now, the organization is working on a new system that will allow government officials to easily see which of their systems are in need of critical repair and keep the Pentagon's weapons systems as safe as possible.

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Cyber Scorecard

This week, Air Force Lieutenant General Kevin McLaughlin told Reuters that the Defense Department is working on a new system that will provide a clearer picture of the military's computer network and prioritize which weapons systems, installations or network issues need the swiftest attention. The system is expected to eventually become an automated scorecard that provides real-time data in order to better protect against cybercrime.

Coming Soon

At the moment, most of the data must be entered by hand, but once the system is up an running, officials say it will be able to pull and display the data itself. The Department of Defense's Cyber Command has already created a cyber response team; McLaughlin says that around half of the 133 teams dedicated to responding to cyber attacks have already been formed and that the remaining organization should be complete by 2016.

Collaboration

One of the biggest initiatives in cyberdefense has been collaboration and the need for separate organizations to share data in order to get ahead of the hacking community. The Pentagon is also embracing this idea by promoting closer collaboration with military services like the Army and the Navy. By communicating with each other, the organizations will be able to alert one another of potential threats and new hacking trends before they become a problem.