The United States cannot be confident that our critical Information Technology (IT) systems will work under attack from a sophisticated and well-resourced opponent utilizing cyber capabilities in combination with all of their military and intelligence capabilities (a “full spectrum” adversary), a new Pentagon report has stated.
The report is prepared by a Defense Science Board (DSB) Task force of the US Department of Defense.
The report titled, ‘Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat’, states:
“The DoD needs to take the lead and build an effective response to measurably increase confidence in the IT systems we depend on (public and private) and at the same time decrease a would-be attacker’s confidence in the effectiveness of their capabilities to compromise DoD systems. We have recommended an approach to do so, and we need to start now!”
According to the US’s Homeland Security News Wire, “the experts on the 33-member task force says that the United States must bolster its cyber-readiness posture through a combination of deterrence, refocused intelligence priorities, and a stronger offense and defense.”
“Defense can take you part of the way, but it needs to be balanced with cyber-offense and conventional capabilities,” the Homeland Security News Wire quoted Lewis Von Thaer, task force co-chairman and president of General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, as saying.
The report said the cyber threat to the US is serious, “with potential consequences similar in some ways to the nuclear threat of the Cold War”. It said it will take years for the DoD to build an effective response to the cyber threat “to include elements of deterrence, mission assurance and offensive cyber capabilities”.