Thomas Michelli, acting deputy chief information officer for cybersecurity at the Defense Department, has said Defense Secretary James Mattis already has a short-term implementation plan to sustain cybersecurity efforts within the department, C4ISRNet reported Friday.One of the measures that the department is working on is strengthening identity credentials and access management systems to ensure federal employees can only go to areas within a government facility that they are allowed to be in, thus potentially lessening the chances of both insider and outsider threat, Michelli said.
The DoD also wants to widen the scope of the defense industrial base form, which is audited by the Defense Security Service, to cover also proof of concepts from smaller firms.
The defense industrial base form contains information about a big company’s intellectual property assets, Michelli said.
The acting deputy cybersecurity CIO said the DoD has plans to increase its cyber workforce and added that Congress has allowed them the budget to be flexible both in salary and other forms of compensation, to entice professionals to work for the department.
The Pentagon has already filled 403 cyber positions and is looking to hire people for more than 8,000 more, Michelli said.
Lastly, Michelli noted that machine learning and artificial intelligence are key tools to uphold cybersecurity measures.
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