The Defense Department “fully-funded” equipment to upgrade and secure its computer networks in its fiscal year 2016 budget request, according to DoD’s number two civilian.
Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said Wednesday DoD’s Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS) will reduce the number of firewalls DoD has to defend from 1,000 to 50, which will make the Pentagon “far more defendable” as a network. Work told an audience at a Center for New American Security (CNAS) event in downtown Washington fully-funding JRSS for FY ’16 was “one of the biggest advances” in the budget, which is set to be released Monday.
DoD spokeswoman Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson declined Wednesday to say how much DoD requested in FY ’16 for JRSS, which is a set of equipment meant to upgrade a secure, consolidated and collaborative Joint Information Environment (JIE) across DoD. JRSS tools perform firewall functions, intrusion detection and prevention, enterprise management, virtual routing and forwarding and provide network security capabilities.
JIE is an ambitious, multi-year information technology (IT) modernization effort. It will consolidate and standardize the design and architecture of the Pentagon’s networks. DoD Acting Chief Information Officer (CIO) Terry Halvorsen said in December the department was aiming to establish initial capability for JRSS by the end of 2016 and complete it by the end of 2017 (Defense Daily, Dec. 5).
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is coordinating with the other military services and DoD sections to identify further expansion of JRSS (Defense Daily, Oct. 9).