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Pentagon Cyber Defense Bill Comes To $100M For 6 Months

Posted by samzenpus on from the freedom-isn't-free dept.

coondoggie writes "Protecting defense departments networks cost taxpayers more than $100 million over the past six months, US Strategic Command officials said yesterday. The motives of those attacking the networks go from just plain vandalism to theft of money or information to espionage. Protecting the networks is a huge challenge for the command, Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton told a cyber security conference in Omaha, Neb., this week. 'Pay me now or pay me later,' Davis said. 'In the last six months, we spent more than $100 million reacting to things on our networks after the fact. It would be nice to spend that money proactively to put things in place so we'd be more active and proactive in posture rather than cleaning up after the fact.'"

5 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. frist post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How much pentagon 'cyber' defense is protecting windows?

    ban ding!

  2. Public domain? by concernedadmin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Are all the lessons learned in the public domain since the Pentagon is a government agency? I'm sure there are many others like myself curious to see how supposedly top-secret issues are kept safe from prying eyes. Failure intrigues me more than success because it's through failure that we learn.

    1. Re:Public domain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Our military does not exist for the benefit of our citizens, and has not for a long time.

      It never did - at least not in American history.

      Originally it was:
      Militia = Civil defense
      Military = Federal Defense

      Now:
      Militia = Domestic Terrorists
      Military = Military Industrial Complex defense

      Or maybe I am just having a bad day.

    2. Re:Public domain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Are all the lessons learned in the public domain since the Pentagon is a government agency? I'm sure there are many others like myself curious to see how supposedly top-secret issues are kept safe from prying eyes. Failure intrigues me more than success because it's through failure that we learn.

      The TS/SCI networks are 100% physically separated from the Internet, and they are monitored. As a cleared government employee, I was working on a TS/SCI machine and had a typo in a URL for their intranet... I retried it several times until I realized the mistake. About a minute later, my internal phone rang and the IT department wanted to know what I was trying to do. And this was in 2000.

  3. Re:TCO? by wasted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So how does this bill factor into the TCO of Windows?
    I don't claim that the $100M would go to zero if Windows were eliminated in favor of more secure servers and desktops, but it would be a lot lower.

    While working for the USAF, I was required to do some online training. To run the training, ActiveX had to be enabled and IE basicially set to "slut mode", that is, accept and run everything. That really didn't give me a good feeling about their security.