NSA Director: Defense Network Not ‘Defensible’
Gen. Keith Alexander
For fiscal year 2012, the U.S. government allotted more than $318 million to be used in support of cybersecurity integration, development and workforce needs.
Army Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, recently shed some light on growing concerns regarding the U.S.’s defense capabilities against cyber attacks.
The U.S. defense network is currently “not defensible,” Alexander said at an FBI-sponsored event at Fordham University, according to Wired. “15,000 enclaves: You can’t see ‘em all. You cannot defend them all.”
According to the Defense Department’s cybersecurity strategy released in July 2011, “Today, many foreign nations are working to exploit DoD unclassified and classified networks, and some foreign intelligence organizations have already acquired the capacity to disrupt elements of DoD’s information infrastructure.”
In an interview with eweek.com, Alexander said the NSA wants to consolidate the military’s network and that the idea is that a smaller and simpler defense network will be easier to both protect and maintain.
The NSA set out to do so by reducing the number of data centers from 15,000 to 3,000 and the number of help desks from 900 to two while moving the Defense Department to the cloud.
The NSA has already cut roughly 40 percent of its data centers and trimmed its number of help desks down to 450, according to Alexander.
According to eweek, Alexander said the moves would shave between 30 to 50 percent off of the NSA’s information technology budget. Alexander also said that moving to the cloud would allow for more visibility of intruders trying to hack government networks.
In conjunction with the Pentagon’s cybersecurity policy, the Pentagon and NSA will be working to enhance cyber defense capabilities, while developing workforce communications, accountability and internal monitoring to further combat possible threats in the future.