U.S. CYBER COMMANDER AND NSA CHIEF COMMENTS ON CYBER OPERATIONS

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
Cybercom Chief Discusses Importance of Cyber Operations
By Jim Garamone
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md., April 14, 2015 – Cyber is an operational domain, and military leaders are going to have to understand its importance and the opportunities and challenges of operating in the domain, Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers said here today.

Rogers, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, director of the National Security Agency, and chief of the Central Security Service, spoke at the Navy League’s 50th annual Sea-Air-Space Exposition. The admiral participated in a panel entitled, “Cyber, Electromagnetic War and Information Dominance.”
Rogers commented on the speed and growth of the cyber domain.

“The world around us is changing,” he said. “The spectrum and the network are converging. That represents vulnerability and opportunity. How do we set ourselves up to take advantage that opportunity while addressing that vulnerability?”

Cyber is an operational domain in which the U.S. military conducts many operations, “many of them like we do in any other operational domain,” Rogers said.

Understanding Cyber Culture

Getting traditional warfighters to understand the importance of cyber operations -- both defense and offense -- requires an understanding of culture and ethos that is more important than just technology, Rogers said.

“We have got to get beyond focusing just on the technical piece here,” Rogers said. “It’s about ethos. It’s about culture. It’s about warfighting. It’s about how do you operationalize a network on a warfighting platform, and what does that mean?”
He added, “It ain’t just a bumper sticker and it’s not just a slogan.”

In the cyber domain, the emphasis on operations will drive how to man, train and equip organizations, the admiral said. It also drives how the organization is structured, he added, and what operational concepts are deployed.

“It’s about how we are going to fight,” he said.

Capitalizing on Information Dominance

The Navy and the other services must put themselves in a position to capitalize on information dominance, the admiral said.

In June, the Navy will mark the 73rd anniversary of the Battle of Midway, said Rogers, noting that Midway changed the tide of World War II in the Pacific. An overmatched U.S. fleet sank four Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carriers in a desperate battle off the strategic island of Midway.

It was through signals intelligence, code-breaking and communications that then-Navy Adm. Chester Nimitz knew where to position the few U.S. aircraft carriers he had in the region to win the battle.

“As an information warfare officer, as an information dominance officer, I take great pride in the role and capability that our predecessors brought to really make a critical difference in an operational outcome,” Rogers said.

Looking forward, cyber warriors must be able to provide the intelligence to win those battles and more, Rogers said.

How much better it would be in the future, he posited, “if we could not only provide those operational commanders great situational and environmental awareness, but what if we could provide commanders the ability to attempt to bring non-kinetic fires to bear, to give commanders assured command and control, because opponents are going to be contesting our command and control?”

Rogers said he’s pleased with the progress the maritime services have made in regard to cyber and the spectrum. But more needs to be done, he added.
The services, he said, need to factor cyber into every decision.
“Now we are in a totally different operational world,” he said.

U.S. CYBER COMMANDER REMARKS ON "CYBERSECURITY DILEMMAS"

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT

Right:  Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee improving the military cyber security posture in an uncertain threat environment, March 4, 2015. DoD photo by Cheryl Pellerin.  

Cybercom Chief: Cyber Threats Blur Roles, Relationships
By Cheryl Pellerin
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, March 6, 2015 – Over five years of U.S. Cyber Command operations, global movement of threat activity through cyberspace has blurred roles and relationships among government agencies, as well as between the public and private sectors and the real and virtual worlds, the Cybercom commander told a House panel.

Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers testified March 4 before the House Armed Services Committee on cyber operations and improving the military’s cybersecurity posture.

“There is no Department of Defense solution to our cybersecurity dilemmas,” Roger said in written testimony. “The global movement of threat activity in and through cyberspace blurs the U.S. government’s traditional understanding of how to address domestic and foreign military, criminal and intelligence activities.”
Similarly, he said, the public and private sectors need each other’s help.
Responding to Cyber Attacks

“The U.S. government, the states and the private sector can’t defend their information systems on their own against the most powerful cyber forces,” the admiral said.

“We saw in the recent hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment that we have to be prepared to respond to cyber attacks with concerted actions across the whole of government,” he added, “using our nation’s unique insights and complete range of capabilities in cooperation with the private sector.”

Cyberspace is more than a challenging environment, Rogers said.

“It is now part of virtually everything we in the U.S. military do in all domains of the battle space and each of our lines of effort,” he said. “There is hardly any meaningful distinction to be made now between events in cyberspace and events in the physical world, as they are so tightly linked.”

Cybercom is growing and operating at the same time, he said, performing many tasks across a diverse and complex mission set.

Guarding DoD Networks

Three years ago, the command lacked capacity, Rogers said. Today, new teams are guarding DoD networks and are prepared to help combatant commands deny freedom of maneuver to adversaries in cyberspace, he added.

Cybercom’s Cyber Mission Force, or CMF, was formed to turn strategy and plans into operational outcomes, the admiral said.

“With continued support from Congress, the administration and the department,” Rogers said, “Cybercom and its service cyber components are now about halfway through the force build for the CMF, [and] many of its teams are generating capability today.”

He added, “We have a target of about 6,200 personnel in 133 teams, with the majority achieving at least initial operational capability by the end of fiscal year 2016.”

Cybercom has been normalizing its operations in cyberspace, he said, to provide an operational outlook and attitude to running the department’s 7 million networked devices and 15,000 network enclaves.

Implementing the Joint Information Environment

The department’s legacy architecture, created during times when security was not a core design element, is being transitioned to a more secure and streamlined architecture that is part of what ultimately will be the Joint Information Environment, or JIE.

“While the JIE is being implemented,” Rogers said, “our concerns about our legacy architecture collectively have spurred the formation of our new Joint Force Headquarters to defend the department’s information networks.”

The Joint Force Headquarters recently achieved initial operational capability, the admiral added, working at the Defense Information Systems Agency under Rogers’ operational control at Cybercom. Its mission is to oversee the day-to-day operation of DoD networks, he added, “and mount an active defense of them, securing their key cyber terrain and being prepared to neutralize any adversary who manages to bypass their perimeter defenses.”

Managing Risk

“It gets us closer to being able to manage risk on a systemwide basis across DoD,” Rogers added, “balancing warfighter needs for access to data and capabilities while maintaining the overall security of the enterprise.”
The admiral said the new headquarters is a stopgap measure while the department migrates its systems to a cloud architecture that’s more secure and facilitates data sharing across the enterprise.

As network security has advanced, so has the maturity of the cyber force, which has gained what Rogers called priceless experience in cyberspace operations.
“That experience has given us something even more valuable -- insight into how force is and can be employed in cyberspace. We have had the equivalent of a close-in fight with an adversary that taught us how to maneuver and gain the initiative that means the difference between victory and defeat,” he explained.
Every Conflict Has a Cyber Dimension

Such insight is increasingly urgent, because every conflict in the world has a cyber dimension, the admiral said, adding that the command sees patterns in cyber hostilities that indicate four main trends:

-- Autocratic governments that view the open Internet as a lethal threat to their regimes;

-- Ongoing campaigns to steal intellectual property;

-- Disruptions by a range of actors that range from denial-of-service attacks and network traffic manipulation to the use of destructive malware; and

-- States that develop capabilities and attain system access for potential hostilities, perhaps with the idea of enhancing deterrence or as a beachhead for future cyber sabotage.

“We believe potential adversaries might be leaving cyber fingerprints on our critical infrastructure, partly to convey a message that our homeland is at risk if tensions ever escalate toward military conflict,” Rogers said.
Heartbleed and Shellshock

For instance, he told the House panel, “I can tell you in some detail how Cybercom and our military partners dealt with the Heartbleed and Shellshock vulnerabilities that emerged last year.”

The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability that allows attackers to steal information, usually encrypted, that’s used to secure the Internet for applications such as Web, e-mail and instant messaging, among others. Attackers can eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users, and impersonate services and users.

Shellshock is a vulnerability that gives attackers the ability to run remote commands on a system.

The admiral said these serious flaws inadvertently were left in the software that millions of computers and networks in many nations depend on.

Responsible developers discovered both security holes, Rogers said. They kept their findings quiet and worked with trusted colleagues to develop software patches that system administrators could use to get a jump on those who read the same vulnerability announcements and devised ways to identify and exploit unpatched computers, he said.

Checking for Vulnerabilities

“We at Cybercom and [the National Security Agency] learned of Heartbleed and Shellshock at the same time that everyone else did,” the admiral said.
Military networks are probed for vulnerabilities thousands of times an hour, he added, so it wasn’t long before they detected new probes checking their websites and systems for vulnerabilities.

“By this point, our mission partners had devised ways to filter such probes before they touched our systems,” Rogers explained. “We were sheltered while we pushed out patches across DoD networks and monitored implementation,” directing administrators to start with the most vulnerable systems.

“Thanks to the efforts we have made in recent years, our responses … were comparatively quick, thorough and effective, and in both cases they helped inform corresponding efforts on the civilian side of the federal government,” the admiral added.

“We also know that other countries, including potential adversaries, struggled to cope with the Heartbleed and Shellshock vulnerabilities,” he noted.
Cyber Military Capabilities

Rogers said this operational approach must be built in many more places.
“The nation’s government and critical infrastructure networks are at risk as well,” he said, “and we are finding that computer security is really an enterprisewide project.”

The admiral added, “We in the U.S. government and DoD must continue learning and developing new skills and techniques … [and] the nation must continue to commit time, effort and resources to building cyber military capabilities.”

NSA DIRECTOR ASKS INDUSTRY'S HELP IN GETTING AMERICAN PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND THE FACTS

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT 
Alexander Calls on Industry to Help Set Record Straight
By Nick Simeone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2013 - The nation's top cyber commander called on industry today to "put the facts on the table" about the National Security Agency following leaks about the agency's surveillance programs, blaming inaccurate or sensational reporting for congressional failure to approve measures that he said are needed to protect the nation from a devastating cyberattack.

"We need the American people to understand the facts. And it's got to start with what we're actually doing -- not what we could be doing -- with the data," Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, NSA director and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, told an industry conference in suburban Maryland. "Most of the reporting is, 'They could be doing 'A.' The facts are they're doing 'B.'"

Warning that he doesn't want to have to explain why he failed to prevent another 9/11, Alexander appealed to industry to help in light of the damaging leaks in June by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Snowden has been charged in absentia with violating the Espionage Act and stealing government property for turning over secret documents to reporters detailing classified NSA programs, actions that Alexander has blamed for causing irreversible and significant damage to the security of the United States and its allies.

In the time since the leaks, Alexander said, the media have complicated matters through exaggerated or inaccurate reporting.

"Everything that comes out is almost sensationalized and inflamed by what it could be, not by what it is, and that singularly in my mind will impact our ability to get cyber legislation and defend the nation," he said. "And if you think about the numbers of disruptive attacks over the last year, and destructive attacks, and you plot that out statistically, what it says to me is it's getting worse, and that's going to grow."

Alexander pointed to a series of recent destructive cyberattacks around the world, including on Saudi Aramco, a Saudi oil company, where he said data in more than 30,000 systems was destroyed last year, as well as attacks against Qatar's Rasgas gas company and twin attacks in South Korea earlier this year.

"Then, look at what hit Wall Street over the last year: over 300 distributed denial-of-service attacks. How do we defend against those?"

Alexander called for laws that would encourage industry and government to share information about potential threats in real time. "This will become hugely important in the future," he said. We've got to have legislation that allows us to communicate back and forth."

To get there, the general said, the rhetoric on media leaks must change and the trust factor must be fixed, "because we're not going to move forward with all that hanging out there."

In the absence of congressional action, President Barack Obama has issued an executive order promoting increased sharing of information about cyber threats across government and industry. However, Alexander said, the nation's cyber defenses remain dependent on closer, real-time cooperation between the government and Internet service providers and the anti-virus community.

"Our team -- government, industry and allies -- have to be ready to act, and we're not," he said. "We're stuck because of where we are in the debate, so what you could do to help is get the facts. We need your help to inform the American people and Congress about what we're doing."

NSA LEADER WARNS OF CYBER ATTACKS AT CYBER SYMPOSIUM

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE,

Nation Must Defend Cyber Infrastructure, Alexander Says

By Claudette Roulo
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 28, 2013 - The United States must have a transparent debate on how it will protect itself in cyberspace, the director of the National Security Agency said yesterday.


"It is a debate that is going to have all the key elements of the executive branch -- that's DHS, FBI, DOD, Cyber Command, NSA, and other partners -- with our allies and with industry," Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander told an audience at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International Cyber Symposium in Baltimore.

Everyone involved must figure out how to work together as the cyber threat grows, said Alexander, who also commands U.S. Cyber Command.

In August, the Saudi Aramco oil company was hit with a destructive attack that destroyed the data on more than 30,000 systems, he said. In September, distributed denial of service attacks began on the U.S. financial sector, and a few hundred disruptive attacks have occurred since.

In March, destructive cyberattacks took place against South Korea, the general said.

"If you look at the statistics and what's going on, we're seeing an increase in the disruptive and destructive attacks. And I am concerned that those will continue," he said. "As a nation, we must be ready."

Over the past few years, there has been a convergence of analog and digital data streams, Alexander said. Now, everything is on one network -- information sent by terrorists, soldiers and school teachers travels through the same digital pipelines.

The cyber world is experiencing an exponential rate of change, he said. "It's wonderful," he added. "These capabilities, I think, are going to help us solve cancer. This is a wonderful opportunity."

But, he said, cyberspace also has vulnerabilities. "We're being attacked," Alexander said. "And we've got to figure out how to fix that."

The key to the nation's future in cyber is a defensible architecture, he said, embodied for the Defense Department by the Joint Information Environment. In that environment, mobile devices will securely connect with fixed infrastructure across the services in a way that allows the department to audit and take care of its data much better than it could do in the legacy systems, Alexander said.

The need to create one joint integrated cyber force is "a great reason for having NSA and Cyber Command collocated," Alexander said. Both are based on Fort Meade, Md.

"We can leverage the exceptional talent that the people at NSA have to help build that force," he added, "and that's superb."




　

NSA DIRECTOR TOLD CONGRESS SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS FOILED 50 TERROR PLOTS

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
NSA Chief: Surveillance Stopped More Than 50 Terror Plots

By Nick Simeone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 18, 2013 - The director of the National Security Agency told Congress today more than 50 terrorist plots worldwide have been prevented since the 9/11 attacks through the classified surveillance programs the government uses to gather phone and Internet data, programs he said are legal and do not compromise the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.


Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, who also commands U.S. Cyber Command, told the House Intelligence Committee he plans as early as tomorrow to provide lawmakers with classified details about the plots that were foiled in an effort to show how valuable the programs are to national security.

Alexander and other senior U.S. officials were called to testify in response to unauthorized disclosures to the media by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed details about the agency's gathering of telephone numbers and the monitoring of Internet activity by foreigners overseas, leaks that Alexander said have caused irreversible and significant damage to the security of the United States and its allies.

Testifying alongside Alexander, Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce discussed two terrorist plots that he said the surveillance programs helped to prevent. In one, emails intercepted from a terrorist in Pakistan helped to stop a plot to bomb New York City's subway system. Another involved a failed attempt by a known extremist in Yemen who conspired with a suspect in the United States to target the New York Stock Exchange. Both cases led to arrests and convictions, Joyce said.

"These programs are immensely valuable for protecting our nation and the security of our allies," Alexander said, and added that they may have helped to prevent the 9/11 attacks themselves if the government had the legal authority, as granted by the Patriot Act, to use them at the time.

The disclosure of the NSA programs has generated a nationwide debate over what techniques the government can legally use to monitor phone and Internet data to prevent terrorism without violating the privacy and civil liberties of Americans. Alexander and other senior U.S officials emphasized that the gathering of phone numbers that already are being collected by service providers as well as the tracking of U.S-based Internet servers used by foreigners are legal and repeatedly have been approved by the courts and Congress.

"These programs are limited, focused and subject to rigorous oversight," and their disciplined operation "protects the privacy and civil liberties of the American people," Alexander said.

The details of the foiled terror plots that he plans to provide to Congress will remove any doubt about the usefulness of the surveillance in keeping the homeland safe, the NSA director told the House panel.

"In the 12 years since the attacks on Sept. 11, we have lived in relative safety and security as a nation," he said. "That security is a direct result of the intelligence community's quiet efforts to better connect the dots and learn from the mistakes that permitted those attacks."

To prevent another damaging leak such as the breach caused by Snowden's disclosures, Alexander told lawmakers, the NSA is looking into where security may have broken down and for ways to provide greater oversight for the roughly 1,000 or so system administrators at NSA who have access to top secret information.

ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIGABA CIPHER MACHINE

Photo:  SIGABA Cipher Device.  Credit:  Wikimedia

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFESNE

Cryptologists Reunite at NSA's 60th Anniversary
By Amaani Lyle
American Forces Press Service
 FORT MEADE, Md., Nov. 8, 2012 - Many intelligence analysts and historians contend the SIGABA cipher device is one of the most important encryption systems the U.S. military has ever known.

Yesterday, it was also a time machine.

The unusual contraption first brought two young cryptologists together during World War II, and nearly 60 years later it has reunited them, sparking memories of their critical work.

The National Security Agency's National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Md., recognized Helen Nibouar and Marion Johnson during a ribbon cutting ceremony unveiling a new exhibit entitled, "60 Years of Cryptologic Excellence."

"We not only break codes, but we make codes ... and we stand on the shoulders of giants," NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis said of Nibouar and Johnson. "When we celebrate Marion and Helen's return to the scene of their early work, we're actually celebrating a long legacy of the history of the National Security Agency."

As the United States stepped up its search to fill non-combat positions in support of World War II, Nibouar and Johnson initially interviewed for typist-clerk positions. On the day of her interview in the Signal Corps building, Nibouar, while at a water fountain, met a woman who encouraged her to give cryptology a try.

She did, but confessed to having no prior familiarity with the field. Johnson said she took a similar path to cryptology, although she was more outspoken during her interview.

"The [hiring officials] asked me if I liked to do crossword puzzles and I said, 'No, I hate them!'" Johnson said. "But they hired me anyway."

Nibouar trained at Morrison Field in West Palm Beach, Fla., where she met Johnson, and the two became fast friends, with no idea they were forging their place in history by obscuring troop movements and other classified material.

"What was really, really difficult was all the messages came in five random letter groups separated by spaces," Nibouar said. And though she typed about 100 words per minute, putting code to tape was considerably more painstaking.

"You couldn't type very fast because you couldn't make a mistake or it would mess up the message," Nibouar said.

After Florida, Nibouar's cryptology journey took her to California, Hawaii and even Japan. And though Johnson worked in different locations, the women wrote letters to keep in touch.

All the while, a shrouded, arduous work life and extended time apart from family became the norm for the two women. A single message could take hours to process. They often received messages so secret that even they were excluded from seeing them.

"The first thing the message would say is 'eyes only,' and we had to stop, not hit another key, get up and go somewhere," Nibouar said. "And an officer in charge came and decoded the message, taking it by hand straight to Gen. [Douglas] MacArthur."

When asked what she thought the messages might have said, Nibouar quipped, "It might have been to have a party."

Transition back into normal life couldn't come too soon for the women, they said.

"I just wanted to go home and get married," Johnson said.

Nibouar also wed, had three children, became a teacher and spent a great deal of time volunteering -- which, at age 91, she continues to this day.

She marvels at modern intelligence technology, but describes SIGABA developer Frank Rowlett as a genius for the machine's simple design and complex capabilities.

National Cryptologic Museum Curator Patrick Weadon said the SIGABA derives from an earlier randomizing system, Enigma, developed by the U.S. Army's Signals Intelligence Service Director William Friedman.

During World War II, people frequently used electro-mechanical devices to communicate securely, Weadon said.

"Enigma was thought to be utterly secure by the Germans because it produced permutations and possibilities of 3x10114 which made it theoretically impossible to crack," he said.

But the Allies did crack Enigma -- as early as 1940 -- prompting the Signals Intelligence Service to develop SIGABA, Weadon said.

SIGABA designers looked at the shortcomings and the frailties of Enigma and designed a machine that had the power of Enigma without its shortcomings, Weadon said.

SIGABA's distinctive ability to advance rotors with another set of rotors made it impenetrable, Weadon explained.

"It was never cracked, it was a perfect machine from the moment it was put on line and it was perfect the day that they took it off," he said. "You're talking about a perfect encryption machine, which many people even today believe is practically impossible [to crack]," he added.

Weadon said he's sure the courage and bravery of U.S. and Allied troops won the war, but the ability to communicate securely on a more consistent basis than the Axis powers ultimately cinched victory.

"When you're reading the other guys traffic and they can't read yours -- you got 'em," he said

LESS THAN ONE YEAR AGO THE U.S. CYBER BRIGADE WAS ACTIVATED

 

 

Photo Credit: U.S. Department Of Defense

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Army activates first-of-its-kind Cyber Brigade
FORT MEADE, Md. (Dec. 9, 2011) -- Network warfare, cyber security and the illegal release and posting of classified information on the internet are all hot topics in recent news headlines -- topics which the government, and more importantly its military, take seriously.

The nature of that seriousness is evident with the Army's recent activation of its first computer network operations brigade.

With an urgent insistence and tremendous help from the National Security Agency, Department of Defense and U.S. Cyber Command, Army and Congressional staff, the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command created the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade to support U.S. and Army Cyber Commands with their missions to provide a proactive cyber defense.

In an event that marked the culmination of years of preparation, the colors of the 780th MI Brigade were unfurled for the first time during an activation ceremony at NSA's Friedman Auditorium, Fort Meade, Md., Dec. 1.

"While normally it is enough to gather in time-honored tradition to pass unit colors to mark the transition of commanders and continuity of mission, on really rare occasions like today we have the opportunity to activate a new unit -- hand-picked, specifically recruited and purpose built, which has and will continue to contribute to a complex fight against those who present a clear and present danger to our nation's security, while providing new and breathtaking capabilities to our Army's already impressive portfolio of war fighting capabilities," said Maj. Gen. Mary A. Legere, INSCOM commanding general.

Though fully preoccupied with two wars in the Middle East, engaged in other operations globally and confronted by resource constraints that might have been an excuse for inaction, the Army empowered INSCOM to once again build a unit in response to a specific threat -- providing it with the mandate, mission and resources to form this brigade.

In December 2010, the Army approved the establishment of an Army Cyber Brigade and designated the 780th MI Brigade to fulfill this mission with an effective date of Oct. 1, 2011.

"'Never rely too heavily on intuition. It will never be a good substitute for good intelligence.'" said Legere, quoting a phrase from Gen. Omar Bradley. "It is his spirit, and in response to a sense of foreboding, that our Army has had the wisdom to resource and create the 780th."

The ceremony also marked the assumption of command for Col. Jonathan E. Sweet, as he accepted the colors from Legere.

"August 19th, 1942, Maj. Gen. Lee, commander of the newly formed 101st Airborne Division, told his Soldiers assembled at Camp Claiborne, La., that 'the 101st has no history, but it has a rendezvous with destiny,'" said Sweet. "These men were the infantry's best-of-the-best. They were selected, trained and deployed to counter an adversary that threatened our country during the Second World War."

Sweet compared his new brigade to a more seasoned one.

"Like the 101st, the 780th MI Brigade has no history, and was formed to counter an adversary operating in a different domain -- a highly technical, man-made domain called cyberspace," Sweet added.

While recognizing numerous individuals responsible for the creation of the brigade, and those who assisted his career accomplishments, Sweet said it is an honor to have the opportunity to return to Fort Meade and join Command Sgt. Maj. Lawrence Hoke, 780th MI Brigade command sergeant major, to activate, command, and operationalize this incredibly special brigade.

"The first 26 miles of this marathon began in October 2002, with the activation of Detachment Meade. Since then it's evolved and expanded into the Army's Network Warfare Battalion, assembled a headquarters company and staff, and today the 780th MI Brigade," said Sweet. "As we cross this finish line and take a moment to enjoy the accomplishment, we're reminded that it's merely a transition point, providing us enough time to catch our breath and get ready to step out across the start line for the next phase of what is actually a triathlon."

The brigade's 781st MI Battalion and Headquarters and Headquarters Company, at Fort Meade, and the 782nd MI Battalion, located at Fort Gordon, Ga., will collectively enable the unit's mission to conduct signals intelligence, computer network operations, and when directed, offensive operations, in support of DOD, Army and interagency operations worldwide, while denying the same to its adversaries.

"This [activation] is a tribute to the belief in the notion that our nation requires assured freedom of maneuver in cyberspace in this era of persistent conflict and the advent of the increasingly more sophisticated threats to our security," Legere added.

Legere added that the Army's newest brigade is fully prepared to assist Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, as they forge ahead in promoting cyber defense and full-spectrum Cyber Ops as one of their top priorities, and in helping Gen. Keith B. Alexander, commander of USCYBERCOM and director of the NSA, as he continues to educate, implore and challenge our nation's leadership to take decisive action to develop and expand this kind of capability that is now so critical to our nation's security.

"The challenge to our nation in this domain is upon us. You see this every day. The future danger that you envisioned has arrived," said Legere. "And the time for the men and women of the 780th to take your place in the Army's long gray operational line as a fully resourced operational unit ready for action is now."

U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY WORKS TO ENSURE CYBERSPACE ACCESS

FROM:  AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE
NSA Chief: Cyber World Presents Opportunities, Challenges
By Jim Garamone
WASHINGTON, July 10, 2012 - Technology has opened tremendous opportunities for the world, but also poses tremendous challenges for those who work to ensure access to cyberspace, the director of the National Security Agency said here yesterday.

Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, who also commands U.S. Cyber Command, told participants in an American Enterprise Institute seminar titled "Cybersecurity and American Power" that the capability exists today for destructive cyber attacks against critical infrastructures.

The cyber world is an increasingly important domain, the general said. In 2000, 360 million people were on the Internet. Today, more than 2.3 billion people are connected. Last year, 107 trillion emails were sent, he added, and a sign of the times is that more than 500,000 apps exist for the iPhone and 280,000 for Android smartphones.

But this tremendous opportunity for communication also presents a potential avenue of attack, Alexander said. A 2007 denial-of-service attack on Estonia virtually shut the nation down, he said, but that was just a transitory event in the evolution of cyber attacks.

"What I think we really need to be concerned about is when these transition from disruptive to destructive attacks -- and I think those are coming," he said.

A destructive attack does not simply overload computers or networks -- it destroys data or software, and systems must be replaced to return to the status quo. "We've got to consider that those are going to happen," Alexander said. "Those are coming up, and we have to be ready for that."

The general stressed that deterring cyber attacks is more difficult than nuclear deterrence, noting that nation-states, cyber criminals, hackers, activists and terrorists all pose threats. "So when you think about deterrence theory, you're not talking about just nation-on-nation deterrence theory," he said. "You have other non-nation-state actors that you now have to consider."

An attack may originate in a country, Alexander said, but no one can really tell if it's the nation, a criminal gang within the country or a lone hacker launching the attack.

Regardless of who initiates an attack, he added, the result could be the same. "You lose the financial sector or the power grid or your systems capabilities for a period of time," the general said. "It doesn't matter who did it; you still lose that. So you've got to come up with a defensive strategy that solves that, from my perspective."

The U.S. defensive strategy has to be a team approach, he said. "We want to get as many people as we can working together to solve this problem," Alexander said.
The White House has led the governmental effort, spanning the Department of Homeland Security to the Defense Department to the FBI and beyond. And any protection -- to be effective -- must include the private sector, the general told the audience. This has caused hackles to rise, he acknowledged, with critics saying such efforts are an invasion of privacy. But, Alexander said, it can be done while protecting civil liberties.

"If the critical infrastructure community is being attacked by something, we need them to tell us at network speed," the general said. "It doesn't require the government to read their mail or your mail to do that. It requires them -- the Internet service provider or that company -- to tell us that that type of event is going on at this time. And it has to be at network speed if you're going to stop it."

Cyber runs at the speed of light, Alexander noted, and human reaction times are simply not fast enough to react.

"Maybe we could do this in real time and come up with a construct [in which] you and the American people know that we're not looking at civil liberties and privacy, [but] we're actually trying to figure out when the nation is under attack and what we need to do about it," he said.