By Franz-Stefan Gady
The Pentagon’s Deputy Chief Information Officer, Richard Hale, on the centrality of cybersecurity in his work.
In a recent interview with Breaking Defense, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Deputy Chief Information Officer for Cybersecurity, Richard Hale, emphasized the central role that cybersecurity is playing in the DoD’s acquisition process: “Every acquisition that DoD does needs to worry about cybersecurity. We’ve got to design and manage each of these computers… whether it’s in airplane or on my desk.”
“Whether the computer is on a desk or in a medical device or in the engine of a jet airplane, that computer has to be designed to be as resistant to attack as possible, it has to be configured securely every second, [and] it’s got to be able to be updated as quickly as possible,” Hale continues in the interview.
He further elaborates that, “The Joint Staff has recently put out a formal requirement document that includes cybersecurity as a key part of the survivability key performance parameter [KPP],” for every new acquisition. He also noted that his staff and that of the DoD’s chief procurement officer, Frank Kendall, “have jointly written a guidebook for acquisition programs on how to better secure things with embedded computing systems.” Examples of embedded computing systems are routers and modems, but can also be digital watches and MP3 players.
Read the full story at The Diplomat