Cyber threats take center stage at LandWarNet

As Tropical Storm Fay marched up the western coast of Florida, LandWarNet's general session got underway under gray, gusty skies here in Fort Lauderdale today to a chorus of "hooahs" – the Army's equivalent of the Marines' "oo-rah." The shouting was incited by Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, the Army's CIO/G6, in an attempt to rouse attendees out of their storm-induced drowsiness.

If that wasn't enough of a wake-up call, those who attended Army Global Network Operations Support Center director Colonel Barry Hensley's session on operations in cyberspace were treated to some choice sound bites, including Hensley's statement: "I do not bank online anymore, based on what I've seen over the last few years."

He pointed out the increasing sophistication of the risk spectrum to sensitive data on personal computers and mobile devices, saying that "the anti-virus companies can't keep up" with the proliferation of malware, and that they were shifting to application "whitelisting" instead, locking out the operations of unapproved software.

But with the expanding threat from cyberattacks — including the recent attacks on Georgia prior to the recent Russian invasion of that country — Hensley noted that there wasn't the same sort of flow of money for cyber defense that accompanied other new threats. "Where is the GWOT [Global War on Terror funding] for cyber?" he asked.

Thematically, next on my agenda was a meeting with Tom Conway, the director of federal business development for McAfee. McAffe's Host Intrusion Prevention security software has been selected as part of the Defense Department's Host Base Security System — a suite of tools mandated for use DOD-wide, and now being purchased for that deployment through DISA, according to Conway.

At the conference, McAfee announced that it had acquired Reconnex, a data loss prevention company. Reconnex's software automates the identification of content within a network, finding duplicate copies of structured and nonstructured data, and helps prevent data from accidentally or intentionally being sent out of the network. Conway said the software was already in use by the Army at Camp Liberty outside Baghdad.

Another vendor stepping up to help the Army secure its networks is Aruba Networks.

David Logan, general manager of Aruba Networks Federal, said that the company's secure wireless LAN technology has now received a Common Criteria Evaluated Assurance Level 2+ (CC EAL 2+), and is in the process of working toward CC EAL 4 certification. Aruba, which was the first secure wireless LAN vendor to receive a FIPS certification for its centralized WLAN, is now the only WLAN vendor with Common Criteria certification. Aruba counts the Army Materiel Command and the Air Force as customers.

For more coverage on the 2008 LandWarNet Conference, click here.

Posted by Sean Gallagher on Aug 19, 2008 at 8:12 AM