What's the DOD doing to defend against the growing number of cyberattacks?
- By Defense Systems Staff
- Oct 17, 2012
As high- and low-level cyberattack incidents continue to pile up, the Defense Department is redoubling efforts to develop defensive and offensive cyber capabilities and establish clear rules of engagement, Aviation Week reports.
The Defense Department is close to finalizing rules of engagement for activities in the cyber domain, and a parallel effort is being made to deploy technologies that will help Pentagon cyber sleuths grapple with the sticky problem of attributing cyberattacks, the story said.
On this matter, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said publicly in early October that more than $3 billion is spent annually on cybersecurity and that in the last two years DOD has invested significantly in forensics that will enable it to address the matter of attribution.
Defense officials have said that the DOD already has attributed “thousands” of low-level attacks, including those supported by nation states or criminals. But they have not stated how they react once the attack is clearly attributed to a particular actor.
The capabilities of state-backed elements in countries such as Russia, China and Iran have increased, said Panetta, who has given senior defense officials the go ahead to direct military-to-military engagements in the cyber domain, the story said.