Air Force networks “face a continuous barrage of assaults” from state-sponsored actors, terror networks, international criminal organizations, individual hackers, and assorted threats in between, said Stephen Walker, USAF’s assistant secretary for science, technology, and engineering. Accordingly, the service is pursuing multiple research efforts to address cyberspace vulnerabilities, he said. Among them, “We’re looking at what we call cyber agility, which is having networks move and not be an [Internet Protocol] address longer than a fraction of a second, so it is very hard for the attacker to find out where you are,” said Walker in testimony this week before the House Armed Services Committee’s emerging threats and capabilities panel. Air Force researchers are also working “cyber security issues for cloud computing” to ensure that “data in the cloud” is secure, he said. (See also Walker’s prepared remarks)
The Pentagon could have the option to create a new combatant command devoted to unmanned and autonomous systems if a provision in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s annual defense policy bill becomes law. The legislation is one of several moves lawmakers have proposed in recent weeks to both bound and…