Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will unveil the Defense Department’s new cyber strategy during a presentation Thursday at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., according to a senior defense official.
Carter is making a multi-day trip of Silicon Valley to meet with industry leaders and deliver a speech at Stanford titled “Rewiring the Pentagon: Charting a New Path on Innovation and Cyber Security.” The visit, overall, will focus on three goals: improving the way the Pentagon partners with Silicon Valley and tech sectors on innovation, building critical relationships that will help drive change at DoD, and outlining what the Pentagon does, and does not do, in defense of the nation in cyberspace and why. 
DoD’s new cyber strategy, its second, will guide the development of DoD’s cyber forces and strengthen its cyber defense and cyber deterrence posture, according to a Pentagon fact sheet. The new cyber strategy focuses on building cyber capabilities and organizations for DoD’s three cyber missions: defending DoD networks, systems and information; defending the United States and its interests against cyber attacks of significant consequence and providing integrated cyber capabilities to support military objectives and contingency plans.
The strategy also sets five strategic goals and establishes specific objectives for DoD to achieve over the next five years and beyond. One goal is to build and maintain ready forces and capabilities to conduct cyberspace operations. DoD said it must train its people, build effective organizations and command and control (C2) systems and fully develop the capabilities that DoD requires to operate in cyberspace. Key objectives of this goal include building technical capabilities for operations, accelerating research and development (R&D) and assessing Cyber Mission Force (CMF) capacity to achieve mission objectives when confronted with multiple contingencies.
Another goal is to defend the DoD information network, secure Pentagon data and mitigate risks to DoD missions. Key objectives of this goal include building the Joint Information Environment (JIE) single security architecture to shift the focus from protecting service-specific networks and systems to securing the DoD enterprise. Other objectives include implementing a capability to mitigate all known vulnerabilities that present a high risk to DoD building a layered defense around the defense industrial base through improved accountability, cybersecurity standards, counterintelligence and a whole of government approach to counter intellectual property (IP) theft.
The third goal is to be prepared to defend the U.S. homeland and U.S. vital interests from disruptive or destructive cyber attacks of significant consequence. DoD plans to achieve this by developing intelligence and warning capabilities to anticipate threats, partnering with key interagency organizations to prepare to defend the nation in cyberspace, working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop continuous and automated mechanisms for sharing information and assessing DoD’s cyber deterrence posture and provide recommendations for improving it.
The fourth goal is to build and maintain viable cyber options and plan to use those options to control conflict escalation and to shape the conflict environment at all stages. DoD said as part of the range of tools available to the president for managing conflict escalation, the Pentagon must develop viable cyber options and integrate those options into DoD plans. The Pentagon says it will develop cyber capabilities to achieve key security objectives with precision and to minimize the loss of life and destruction of property.
The final goal is to build and maintain robust international alliances and partnerships to deter shared threats and increase international security and stability. Partner capability building will focus on priority regions, to include the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Europe. DoD said all three of its cyber missions require close collaboration with foreign allies and partners.