The U.S. Air Force has invited computer security professionals from across the U.S. and select partner nations to participate in a bug bounty event that will be based on the Defense Department‘s ‘Hack the Pentagon‘ program.The service branch said Wednesday its office of the chief information officer will sponsor the ‘Hack the Air Force‘ event as part of the Cyber Secure campaign that seeks to utilize talent from within and outside the DoD.
The service branch said the event will help expand the participation pool to include ‘white hat’ hackers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K.
David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff and an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 for 2017, said the approach to draw on talent from local and partner-nation citizens will help boost cybersecurity through the identification of security vulnerabilities.
Some small and large companies utilize white hat hacking and crowdsourced security concepts to help defend networks against potential malicious attacks, the service branch noted.
“The additional participation from our partner nations greatly widens the variety of experience available to find additional unique vulnerabilities,” said Peter Kim, Air Force chief information security officer.
“We’re mobilizing the best talent from across the nation and among partner nations to help strengthen the Air Force’s cyber defenses,” added Lisa Disbrow, acting secretary of the Air Force.
The Defense Digital Service helped the service branch establish the Air Force Digital Service team that will help convert the current competition for technical talent into a partnership between public and private sectors.
