Introducing US Cyber Command

[Commentary] The Defense Department is establishing the U.S. Cyber Command. It's mission is critical.

The command and control of our forces, as well as our weapons and surveillance systems, depend upon secure and reliable networks to function. Protecting this digital infrastructure is an enormous task: Our military runs 15,000 networks and uses more than seven million computer devices. It takes 90,000 people and billions of dollars to maintain our global communications backbone. Establishing Cyber Command is just the latest in a series of steps the Pentagon has taken to protect our military networks through layered and robust cyber defenses. We have instituted strict standards to ensure that our firewalls are properly configured and antivirus software up-to-date. We have reduced the number of ports through which commercial Internet traffic enters and leaves military networks, and we have installed highly sophisticated defense systems that detect and repair network breaches in real time. But we cannot rely solely on a Maginot line of firewalls. It is not sufficient to react to intrusions after they occur. Waiting even milliseconds is too long. The National Security Agency has therefore pioneered systems that use our monitoring of foreign communications to detect intrusions before they reach our networks and to counter them with automated defenses once they arrive. These active defenses now protect all defense and intelligence networks in the .mil domain. Thanks to these active defenses, our networks are significantly more secure than they were just two years ago. Yet the cyber threat is so pervasive and pernicious that we must mount a broader and more permanent institutional response.