Army's $15 million TMF award powers new strategy to secure operational technology

The Army operates 23 depots, arsenals, and factories, where a networked system manufactures machinery that produces explosives, ammunition, weapons, and other industrial materials essential to the ground forces’ combat operations. controlling.

But officials are concerned that so-called “operational technology” at these facilities and other critical infrastructure locations may be subject to digital hacking, tampering and other cyber incidents.

The Army is currently advancing $15 million from a Technology Modernization Fund awarded last week. The fund aims to plug the digital holes in these industrial sites and monitor networks for potential cyber intrusions.

The Army’s Chief Information Officer, Raj Iyer, said some of the Army’s “organic industry base” facilities are of particular importance.

“This machine is controlled by a control system that is not well protected today,” Iyer said at a roundtable with reporters from the U.S. Army Association in Washington on Oct. 11. I’m here. “And from a readiness standpoint, we can see how adversaries can target some of these assets.”

TMF funding for the “Army Critical Infrastructure Cyber ​​Protection Project” will help mitigate and remediate cyber vulnerabilities at facilities. According to the TMF award description, there are an estimated 500,000 devices across the Army’s industrial facilities.

“A compromised network can disrupt production, destroy equipment, injure workers, and affect coordination with multiple partner agencies,” it said. “Any unrest in the systems that support these OIBs could pose a significant national security risk.”

The Army has said it will also use the funds to pay for its “Security Operations Center as a Service” at manufacturing sites. Such services involve third-party her vendors who actively monitor their networks for potential cyberthreats.

New Army Cyber ​​Strategy

According to Iyer, the Army has developed its first operational technology cybersecurity strategy this year to help address concerns about digital threats to the service’s infrastructure. The strategy is classified, but Iyer said the Army may release an unclassified version.

“If you look at the Corps of Engineers and all the dams they operate, and you look at a lot of the critical infrastructure that the Army owns in the civilian space, yes, manufacturing bases are one of the key stakeholders. But across the Army, there were other gaps,” he said. If you look at the ports that actually ship everything, all of them are disputed.”

The service will begin by addressing Army Materiel Command’s industrial base facilities, but the intention is to further the critical infrastructure cyber protection program, Iyer said.

Mr Iyer said: “There’s the Internet of Things, and there’s all the sensors that go into a multitude of systems that don’t understand the supply he chain behind it.” This is a broader need. , we will expand it.”

The funding injection from TMF comes amid widespread concerns about the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure and corresponding pressure from the Biden administration to set higher cyber standards for those systems.

“The reason we worked with the White House on this and actually they approached us and thought this was a great idea is because this is really a federal-wide issue,” Iyer said.

He said partners on the project include cybersecurity and infrastructure security agencies, as well as the Energy and State Departments.

“When you share lessons learned and see what they see from their perspective, you know you can really work together,” says Iyer.