US military networks vulnerable to cyber attacks

“Our networks are under a relentless attack... Some adversaries successfully get through,” Fogarty said at the virtual 2020 AFCEA Army Signal Conference on Tuesday. “We must improve our cyber security, we must become faster, more aggressive and more importantly persistent in defense of our networks, data and weapons platforms.”

He sees part of the problem in the current network architecture where systems used by seven million Pentagon employees are owned and administrated by multiple organizations and authorizing officials throughout the army “without sufficient visibility and sufficient command and control.”

“We just don’t see ourselves. Today our systems are inefficient and exposed to unsustainable risk,” Fogarty said. “Our commanders must be able to see an adversary and see themselves in real time in cyberspace with the same level of confidence that they have in a land domain. We need to be able to sense, understand, decide, act and assess faster than the competition to gain a decisive advantage across the information environment and cyber domain.”

As part of the solution he advocates moving toward “a concept of command-centric network of operations” - establishing areas of operations under a single commander with responsibility, authority, resourcing and accountability.