On this week’s Cyber Report, Maj. Gen. Gregg Potter, US Army Ret., Northrop Grumman’s lead corporate executive for Fort Meade and Aberdeen Proving Ground, discusses the need to improve the cybersecurity of America’s high-tech weapons with Defense & Aerospace Report Editor Vago Muradian.
On weapon system survivability:
Potter points to the National Defense Authorization Act, which in 2016 directed the defense department to ensure their weapon and mission systems are survivable.
“There’s a big effort undergoing now across the services to understand where they’re vulnerable and then correct those vulnerabilities,” Potter said.
Protecting older weapon systems:
The answer is twofold, Potter says:
- Cyber survivability must be a priority in the initial design of the system.
- Services must reinforce legacy systems already in the field — a more difficult challenge, Potter says.
A partial solution may be DevSecOps (short for development, security and operations), best practice in the commercial area, Potter says. DevSecOps is security improvement software that can be either added to a system, or completely replace it.
The Cyber Report and our cyber coverage are sponsored by Northrop Grumman.
