U.S. Cyber  Command will focus on systems and platforms into 2017. They are vulnerable to cyber attacks as much the DOD and civilian Internet and intranet backbones are, says Admiral Rogers, who heads the Command.

Rogers plans to work more with Government contractors to design secure systems from the get go. This differs from the re-engineering of existing systems now. “Many of the DOD systems in use today were built and when cyber redundancy, resilience and defensibility were not core design characteristics,” according to Pentagon briefs. But this problem is not unique to DOD, Rogers says, and the private sector systems are very similar. “We’re trying to figure out … how to deal with that,” he says.

This year Cybercom is five years old. During these five years, the command focused on ramp up to 6,200 cyber professionals, which it organized into teams and aligned against three missions. The missions?

1. Defending DoD networks

2. Being prepared if Cybercom is directed to respond to incidents of significant cyber consequence in the private sector

3. Using the cyber mission force to generate a spectrum of capabilities, from defense to offense.

In the end, “Cybersecurity is all about partnerships,” Rogers says. “There is no single group,… nation,…segment,…entity that has all the answers.” Thus he plans greater collaboration between the Command and other nations in 2017 and the years to come.

Cyber Command to Focus on Systems and Platforms, Not Just Networks