Cyber Defense

The Defense Department must "change the paradigm" of how it responds to cyber threats, according to a top Pentagon official.

"We see a disturbing track from exploitation to disruption to destruction," Gen. Keith Alexander, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said today.

Speaking at a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency conference in Arlington, VA, Alexander said he would like to see the Pentagon change the way it reacts to cyber threats from a defense that responds when they occur to an approach that does not wait for an attack to take place.

"The way we set up our defense is much like the Maginot line," Alexander explained, referring to the defensive fortifications built by France that were flanked by Germany during World War II. "The adversary looks at it for vulnerabilities. They find the vulnerability, they penetrate the network . . . we beat the system administrator, we diagnose the malware, we set up the signature, we clean our systems. . . we wait for the next exploitation, and they come."

"We've got to change the paradigm of waiting for that software," he said, adding that the department is creating "hunting teams" to find malware in networks "as quickly as possible." This concept is part of the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) pilot the department is testing.

"The partnership is a great way to set forward," Alexander said of the partnership with industry. "It gets you hunting within [industry] networks and it sets up a boundary."