In my last blog post, I discussed the aspects of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that appear to mandate adoption of commercial cloud computing services. Congressional interest in IT issues didn’t stop there, however; there are sections in the new law that addresses cyber security.
Government embarrassment over the Wikileaks scandal (the thousands and thousands of documents and e-mails from DoD, the State Department, embassies and other agencies) has resulted in NDAA now trying to close the barn door – the Secretary of Defense is supposed to establish a program to detect insider threats by spotting unauthorized access to, use of, or transmission of classified or controlled unclassified information. The program is supposed to incorporate technology solutions that allow for centralized monitoring and detection of unauthorized activities.
To address “unknown” cyber attacks, the Secretary is required to develop and implement a plan to implement advanced capabilities to discover and isolate penetrations and attacks that were previously unknown. This will certainly provide justification to boost spending on cyber security; presumably, DoD will continue to work on cyber warfare doctrine as well, since sooner or later the Pentagon will be able to identify enough specifics about nation-state incursions that they’ll have to wrestle with decisions about appropriate responses.
Will this be enough and in time to prevent a true cyber disaster? Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of both NSA and the new U.S. Cyber Command, is not optimistic, however the jury is still out.