[Infowarrior] - 14 tech firms form cybersecurity alliance for government

[Richard Forno]

14 tech firms form cybersecurity alliance for government
Lockheed Martin, top suppliers launch initiative for government market

	• By Wyatt Kash
	• Nov 12, 2009

Thirteen leading technology providers, together with Lockheed Martin,  
today announced the formation of a new cybersecurity technology  
alliance. The announcement coincided with the opening of a new NexGen  
Cyber Innovation and Technology Center in Gaithersburg, Md., designed  
to test and develop new information and cybersecurity solutions for  
government and commercial customers.

The alliance represents a significant commitment on the part of  
competing technology companies to work collaboratively on new ways to  
detect and protect against cyber threats and develop methods that  
could automatically repair network systems quickly after being attacked.

The companies participating in the Cyber Security Alliance include APC  
by Schneider Electric, CA, Cisco, Dell, EMC Corp. and its RSA security  
division, HP, Intel, Juniper Networks, McAfee, Microsoft, NetApp,  
Symantec and VMware.

Art Coviello, EMC executive vice president and president of RSA,  
speaking on behalf of the new alliance at the center’s dedication  
ceremony, highlighted the importance of combining the strengths of the  
companies at the NexGen center.

“Our adversaries operate in sophisticated criminal ecosystems that  
enable and enhance their attacks,” he said. To defend against such  
attacks, “we need to build effective security ecosystems based on  
collaboration, knowledge sharing and industry best practices.”

“One of the challenges in moving from being reactive to being  
predictive,” said Lockheed Martin chairman, president and chief  
executive officer, Robert Stevens, “is the need to model real-world  
attacks and develop resilient cyber defenses to keep networks  
operating while they’re under attack.”

That and the ability to test solutions from end-to-end across a  
variety of hardware and software technologies are among the primary  
goals of the new cyber innovation and technology center. Nearly $10  
million worth of software and equipment was contributed to the NexGen  
center by members of the Cyber Security Alliance, according to Charles  
Croom, vice president of Cyber Security Solutions for Lockheed Martin  
Information Systems & Global Services.

The 25,000-square-foot design and collaboration center is co-located  
with Lockheed Martin’s new global cyber innovation range and the  
corporation’s network defense center. The network defense center  
routinely handles 4 million e-mail messages and about 10T of data per  
day en route to and from Lockheed Martin’s 140,000 employees. Analysts  
there look continually for malicious activity and data patterns, such  
as executable software code embedded in a PDF attachment.

The new NexGen facility will be able to tap into the defense center’s  
data feeds, or simulate government agency computing environments, and  
test various approaches to mitigate cyberattacks, according to Richard  
Johnson, chief technology officer for Lockheed Martin Information  
Systems & Global Services. It can also be used to test ways of  
improving operating efficiencies, he said. The center includes seven  
collaboration areas as well as high definition video teleconferencing  
capabilities.

The new center also features dedicated distributed cloud computing and  
virtualization capabilities. Those capabilities would permit an agency  
to simulate a network under attack and test various responses. For  
instance, analysts could replicate an operating network and freeze it  
on a second virtual location, in order to study the nature of the  
attack, while still supporting the primary network.

“We face significant known and unknown threats to our critical  
infrastructure,” Croom said. “We not only need solid defenses but also  
the right technologies to predict and prevent future threats.”

Croom said the new Cyber Security Alliance, and in particular the  
ability for experts from participating companies to work jointly on  
some of the harder problems agencies face, is one of elements that  
distinguishes the NexGen from other testing facilities.


About the Author

Wyatt Kash is editor in chief for Government Computer News.