David Cattler, director of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, said DCSA’s partnership with the Department of Defense, industry and academia helps ensure a trusted federal and industrial workforce and protect the country’s trusted workspaces.

“We are the gatekeepers, working with you and industry to ensure classified information and technology remains safe from unauthorized foreign access,” Cattler said of DCSA during his keynote address at a conference held Oct. 18.

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DCSA’s Capabilities, Mission as Integrated Security Services Provider

During the event, Cattler outlined DCSA’s mission, vision and capabilities as the U.S. government’s provider of integrated security services.

In terms of personnel security, he said the agency conducts 2.7 million background investigations a year. To ensure industrial security, DCSA oversees more than 10,000 cleared companies, 13,000 facilities and 5,500 classified IT systems.

According to the DCSA director, the agency will expand its foreign ownership, control or influence mission to evaluate all DOD contracts worth more than $5 million per award.

DCSA’s Action to Strengthen Insider Threat Vigilance 

DCSA started deploying insider threat representatives directly into the defense enterpise, commands and installations across the U.S. to strengthen its vigilance against insider threats.

“These aren’t just liaisons. They are strategic force multipliers that forge unbreakable partnerships between DCSA and component programs,” said Cattler. “They strengthen the partnerships between DITMAC and component insider threat programs, providing a critical link to insider threat resources, information and capabilities.”

The U.S. Army is developing a universal electronic warfare capability designed to be interoperable with any platform. Called the Modular Mission Payload, or MMP, the standardized EW kit can be integrated onto any system and will enable the introduction of updates and new technologies to existing capabilities.

Modular Mission Payload Development Update

In an interview with Breaking Defense, Col. Scott Shaffer, project manager within the Army’s Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, shared that the MMP is still in the early stages of development.

“I probably don’t have a lot of information on the production quantities and demand, because part of the prototyping process, which we’re going to dig really deep into next fiscal year, is understanding how many do we need?” Shaffer said. “And then where do they fit in the formations?”

What is currently known about the MMP, according to the official, is that it needs to be commercial-off-the-shelf or government-off-the-shelf. He explained that a COTS and GOTS configuration will allow the Army to easily swap systems with newer kits in the future, “as long as they conform to some kind of standard in that system.”

Differences Between MMP and CMOSS

Despite similarities, Army officials insisted that MMP diverges in some aspects from another service effort, the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance and EW Modular Open Suite of Standards, also known as CMOSS.

CMOSS has a plug-and-play architecture, allowing an exchange of software cards between platforms to respond to specific environmental threats. During a recent panel discussion, Col. Leslie Gorman, EW capability manager for the Army, said CMOSS is not modular enough compared to MMP and may be too large for some unmanned aerial systems and armored fighting vehicles.

“With the modular EW systems, we’re looking at lighter weight chassis, in some cases, dual-use EW sensors,” Gorman revealed.