The Navy transitioned the main hub of its intranet operation to ensure the system remained functional ahead of Hurricane Irene’s battering of the East Coast, Fleet Cyber Command said.
“Fleet Cyber Command has been exercising continuity of operations plans throughout the week to ensure cyber operations remain fully functional during Hurricane Irene,” Cmdr. Steve Mavica, spokesman for the command, said on Friday, before the storm arrived. “In advance of the storm, fleet communications, network and space operations have been shifted to several locations unaffected by the hurricane.”
The Norfolk Network Operations Center (NOC), which largely runs the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) for the Navy, shifted responsibility to NOCs in San Diego and Pearl Harbor, NMCI developer Hewlett-Packard [HPQ] said. The Marines tranferred operations from Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., to Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Fleet Cyber Command would not confirm those locations. “NMCI maintains redundant command and control capabilities to minimize disruption to the fullest extent,” Mavica said.
Bill Toti, vice president for at HP for Navy strategic programs, said shifting the work to the other locations as the weekend approached was simply a matter of increasing the staff at the other facilities responsible for ensuring NMCI is operating smoothly.
“All you really have to do is man the screens,” he said.
Development on NMCI began in 2000 and it became fully operational in 2005. It was designed to reduce the number of seperate, legacy communications sytems to move toward an interoperable command and control network needed for transitioning to a net-centric environment, HP said.
After the Japan earthquake in March and subsequent tsunami warning the Pearl Harbor NMCI operation was shifted to other locations, HP said.