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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

How industry and government can partner for more secure systems

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Categories: ASCF News National Preparedness Cyber Security

Comments: 0

Industry needs to be able to tell government how software was developed and how security measures were integrated into it, a top official at the National Institute of Standards and Technology said March 10.

“Give us some evidence that those security features are actually in place and doing what they’re supposed to do,” said Ron Ross, a fellow at NIST who leads a new DevSecOps project.

Ross, speaking at an Advanced Technology Academic Research Center event on DevOps, said that the future of U.S. national and economic security hinges on industry and government getting the transition to DevOps and DevSecOps, two different software development approaches where collaboration and security considered from the beginning, because they are critical to national and economic security.

“All the work that’s going on now, whether it’s experimental or whether it’s becoming more mature, we need to be able to normalize this type of process so it becomes [something] people would just do routinely — it becomes institutionalized and operationalized across the entire federal government,” Ross said.

Industry, Ross said, is a critical partner in that process. The key is ensuring that customers no longer have to worry about the effectiveness and origin of security controls.

“If we can make this a win-win for industry, where they’re producing stuff at their pace at the speed of commercial industry and we can get the security capabilities built in, as part of that agile process, now it’s a win for them and it’s a win for [government],” Ross said.

Ross said while agencies sought to implement DevSecOps, they need to take a “holistic view.” That approach includes hardening the target, which could stop most cyberattacks, but also includes damage limitation and cyber resiliency. Damage limitation includes using virtualization of computers or zero-trust approach to protect networks. Creating cyber resiliency includes implementing policies inside the organization that are external to a system.

“If we can do that and do it well, everybody’s going to be better off,” Ross said. “We’re going to have a safer, more secure country. We’re going to have a leading technology force in the world. It’s in our DNA to do this, we’ve done this in the past and we can do it again.”

Photo: DevSecOps is critical to national security, according to a top NIST official. (D3Damon)

https://www.fifthdomain.com/civilian/2020/03/10/how-industry-and-government-can-partner-for-more-secure-systems/

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