Effectively Managing Defense Networks To Ensure Secure And Appropriate Information Sharing

The Defense Networks & Information Integration Conference (DNCO) has become the definitive conference for military and government officials to network, and discuss the strategies needed to give the war fighter tactical advantage through NCO technologies. This year's theme, of securing appropriate information sharing, focused on the strategies that leading defense officials are employing to leverage commercial interoperability and ensure network protection.

Compelling insights and case studies were heard from top government and military officials, including:

DNCO 2008 was a tremendous success, with fantastic presentations from leaders in the information sharing and network integration field such as:

• Lieutenant General David A. Deptula, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, US Air Force
• Brigadier General Mark Bowman, Director Command, Control, Communications, and Computer (J6), US Central Command, US Air Force
• Tony Sager, Chief of Vulnerability Analysis and Operations Group, National Security Agency
• Rear Admiral Janice Hamby, Director, Command Control Systems NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, US Navy

Executive Summary:

Key Take-Aways that DNCO 2008 attendees could bring back to their organizations:

• Understanding that ISR is an operational element, not a support and how this plays into the Air Force’s ISR Strategy (including integrating ISR capabilities and smarter ISR acquisition)
• ISR has gotten pretty good at finding intel, but now we need tools that are persistent enough to bore down
• Taking best practices from industry (especially organizations like Google) to make sure that information is available and ready when the warfighter needs it at the tactical edge
• Information is structured data. In order for the data sharing process to be really effective at the tactical edge, there has to be processes in place to manage the flow of idea to knowledge
• To compete with the enemy’s capabilities and their use of COTS, the acquisition processes have to remain agile and flexible (which they aren’t currently!)
• The NSA’s paradigm shift: the red team is no longer trying to give each network a personalized report of its vulnerabilities, but instead wants to create a general listing of vulnerabilities that could found on any given network, so that the entire group of networks can safeguard against these issues at the same time
• Recruiting and retaining members of the C4ISR workforce may be the most crucial element to see the growth of this environment and the continued ability to sustain current ISR activities

The major themes for Defense Network Centric Operations 2008 included:

• Evolving NCO policies
• C4ISR
• Information Assurance
• Network Security
• Spectrum Management
• Interoperability
• Future NCO Technologies