Ensuring effective cyber defenses are in place to help contain the proliferation of technologies that could contribute to enemy capabilities is one way to prevent the danger at a time when so much technology is commercially available, an Army general said Wednesday.
Lt. Gen. David Mann, the chief of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command and Army Forces Strategic Command, told a gathering hosted by the Peter Huessy Breakfast Series that cyber is key to protecting sensitive U.S. technologies, particularly for ballistic missiles, but acknowledged that rogue countries can obtain useful information on the internet.
“I don’t want to come across as being defeatist but I really don’t know how much you can do because so much is available on the internet, quite frankly,” he said. “I don’t know how much you can do to avoid the proliferation of technologies.”
Mann said countries are continuously trying to access critical U.S. technologies and that his command regularly runs drills to test its cyber defenses and ensure the proper network architectures are in place to prevent online break-ins, including through the use of red teams to challenge the defenses.
“One of the internal things that we are looking at is in terms of cyber and what can we do to make sure that we first identify vulnerabilities, but also put in place our ability to put up that shield,” he said. “That has received a lot of emphasis and focus, even in our ballistic missile systems we are looking at that very hard.”