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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.

Pentagon ‘zero trust’ cyber office coming in December

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Categories: ASCF News Cyber Security

Comments: 0

Source: https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/cybercon/2021/11/10/pentagon-zero-trust-cyber-office-coming-in-december/

The Defense Department is moving closer to adopting its “zero trust” architecture program, a top Pentagon information security official said Wednesday. (Sergey Balakhnichev/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON ― Next month, the Pentagon will formally launch a new office dedicated to accelerating the adoption of a new “zero trust” cybersecurity model, a senior DoD official said Wednesday.

David McKeown, DoD’s chief information security officer, said the office will fall under DoD’s chief information officer and be led by a yet-to-be-named senior executive. The move is part of an acceleration to ongoing zero trust implementation spurred by the Russian-orchestrated SolarWinds intrusion of federal systems.

“We’ve redoubled our efforts, we’ve fought for dollars internally to get after this problem faster,” McKeown said at C4ISRNET’s CyberCon event. “We’re standing up a portfolio management office that will ... rationalize all network environments out there, prioritize and set each one of them on a path of zero trust over the coming five, six, seven years.”

Zero trust assumes no trust across networks, devices or users, and demands constant, real-time authentication of the users accessing data. It’s a departure from perimeter-based security, through which an intruder can often move freely through a network after penetrating it.

McKeown said that while DoD has adopted some components that are meant to work together to create a “zero trust” environment, it’s not being prescriptive about the products its enclaves choose to adopt, as long as those products work together.

“We’ve got a lot of attention on this now, and we’ve got senior leadership in the department on board and putting their money where their mouth is and helping us to implement this at a very fast pace,” he said.

His comments come nearly six months after the Biden administration’s cybersecurity order to improve protections at government agencies in the wake of the SolarWinds intrusion.

McKeown said the sophisticated attack demonstrates the lengths to which intruders will go and the need for better security. SolarWinds, he noted, was a widely trusted piece of software that nonetheless began “beaconing out” from within networks.

“We have to be able to detect something like that,” McKeown said. “Not only the external compromises but the internal malicious behavior and potential supply chain risks need to be looked at.”

“We feel like zero trust is the only solution out there right now that gives us a fighting chance on detecting these folks that may have a foothold on our network or this anomalous software that we’ve allowed in.”

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