Outgoing Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn is expected to unveil information about the Pentagon’s first-ever cybersecurity strategy on July 14.
Lynn will discuss the plan during a speech and the Pentagon will release an unclassified version of the document, according to news reports.
“The unclassified version, you will find, follows much of what was in the administration’s cyber strategy,” Pentagon spokesman Marine Col. Dave Lapan told reporters recently, according to American Forces Press Service.
President Barack Obama unveiled in May the U.S. International Strategy for Cyberspace. The forthcoming Pentagon-specific strategy is not focused on acts of war, Lapan reportedly said.
“This is about an overall cyber strategy, and how we defend ourselves against cyber threats,” he is quoted as saying.
Lynn said on June 16 that the U.S. International Strategy for Cyberspace “provides a framework for our contribution to an effort that has many facets, from Internet freedom and e-commerce to cybercrime law enforcement and international norms of behavior.” That broader plan, he said while addressing the International Workshop on Global Security in Paris, “will help us build a coalition of nations whose mutual interest in securing cyberspace will ensure the benefits we derive from it flow uninterrupted.”
Lynn said the Pentagon-specific plan will “guide how each military service trains, equips, and commands its forces for the cyber mission.”
The “U.S. Defense Department is moving aggressively to counter the cyber threat,” he said in Paris. “As a doctrinal matter, we must be able to defend and operate freely in cyberspace.”
The forthcoming “comprehensive” Pentagon strategy follows actions in the past two years to deploy “specialized active defenses to protect military networks” and establish the U.S. Cyber Command to operate and defend them, Lynn said last month.
The new plan is expected to call for technology solutions such as using sensors and digital signatures in military networks to prevent harmful code from impacting them.