McAfee to assist in DoD network security challenge
Darren Lake, Associate Editor
Fort Lauderdale
Network security giant McAfee announced at AFCEA’s LandWarNet show in Florida that after an 18 month trial the company will be making the US military’s networks more secure by deploying its Host Based Security System.
Under a mandate from the Defense Information Services Agency McAfee is set to role out HBSS to some five million end nodes making it the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) largest cyber security programme. The company is also set to make data safer by installing Data At Rest encryption to the end nodes.
Tom Conway, McAfee’s Director Federal Business Development, told Digital Battlespace that the DISA agreement would allow the DoD to increase the ‘defence in depth’ of its networks. HBSS and DAR will help deflect both hostile external attacks and malicious or accidental internal actions.
The technology that McAfee is providing gives a more proactive level of defence than traditional anti-virus security. The system can analyse network behaviours and compare that to a set of defined allowed behaviours.
Conway said that McAfee was continuing to improve its security offerings to DoD and was in constant dialogue with the military about the range of cyber threats that it is facing. However, it is a constant battle with HBSS and DAR being yet another layer of defence in the onslaught.
According to McAfee DoD is becoming an increasingly sophisticated customer realising that alongside the enhanced capabilities brought by Network Centric Warfare there are also new dangers particularly the dependency on the network for information flow. Protecting that network and engagement with the likes of McAfee is now a major priority.