By Geoff Fein

As the battlefield becomes network centric, with warfighters relying more and more on data collected by sensors and unmanned systems, keeping that information secure will be a primary driver of the Global Information Grid 2.0, according to an official with the Joint Staff.

“Security is one of the primary aspects of GIG 2.0, and we really [are trying] to change the way we think about security because security for the network is not the same as security for a building, and today we tend to treat it that way,” Vice Adm. Nancy Brown, director for command control, computers and communication (C4) systems on the Joint Staff (J6), told Defense Daily in a recent interview.

“We want to lock things down. We want to block things off, and that really impacts our ability to exploit the tools and the capabilities that the network provides for us. So we are almost imposing self-denial on ourselves…the way we look at it today,” she added.

One problem, Brown noted, was that security was never really thought of up front.

“We always wanted to slap it on at the end. It cost a lot more and it’s not as effective when you do that,” she said. “We are kind of in the wild, wild west days.”

What the Joint Staff is trying to do is come up with a different way to secure the network and to look at securing data and making sure that data that needs to be secured is secured, Brown added.

“There is a lot of data out there that really doesn’t need to be secured. One size doesn’t fit all,” she said. “When you are on the battlefield and all the information you have is perishable, because in five minutes it’s not going to matter who knows that information, then why would we spend a lot of money securing that piece of equipment when the real risk of the information stored on it isn’t that significant?

“We need to look at what is the risk of an adversary gaining access and do the cost-benefit [analysis] for how much we secure it and how we go about securing it. We really need to think very differently about the network and security than we have in the past,” Brown added.

It will be a matter of training everyone to be aware of the perils out there on the net, Brown said.

“It’s just like handling a weapon. We train everybody on how to handle a weapon. You have to train people how to handle the tools you give them. The network is another tool we are giving people to help them complete their mission,” she said.

“You’ve got to train them how to handle it, what are the basics. When somebody asks me if I want to go to a website, what are the indications that that’s not the site I want to go to? What are the things I need to think about? If I open an e-mail from someone who I am not sure I recognize their name, should I make sure the subject [line] is spelled correctly and not misspelled? What are the common things that trick people into doing things they shouldn’t [do],” she explained. “It’s just basic etiquette and education. We do that with all of the other tools we give folks. We just have overlooked doing it with the network, and we need to catch up.”

The military is focusing more and more on cyber security today in exercises and war games, Brown said.

“It’s like other focus areas for us. We play this out in an exercise and we take lessons learned and then we incorporate that back into our tactics and techniques,” she said. “We are focusing much more heavily on cyber in our exercises these days than we have in the past.”

In the past, the network was really more of a bandwidth issue,” Brown said. “Do I have a big enough pipe to get the information I want? Today the network is not just the pipes, but it really does have an impact on decision making, can I trust the information I am getting, that it hasn’t been somehow skewed or packets lost? Those are things we need to exercise…what does it mean for my network to be degraded and how do I operate in a degraded mode?”

“We are focusing our exercises more in those areas,” she added. “We’re working everyday to improve the way we do that…improve our tactics, our indications and warnings, just like we do in every other warfare specialty we have.”