Cyber Guard exercise expands to whole-of-nation defense

Two key words in defining a unified national cyber defense are “operational” and “interoperable.” More than 100 organizations from government, academia, industry and the international community recently worked on developing those aspects during the fourth annual Cyber Guard exercise, from June 8 to June 26. The large-scale exercise focused on building a whole-of-nation approach to defending networks, protecting infrastructure and sharing information across established lines.

“Cyber Guard is designed to exercise the interface between the Department of Defense — the active and Reserve and Guard components — that are focused on the cyber mission, and to partner with other elements of the U.S. government as well as state and local authorities,” U.S. Cyber Command Commander Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers said in a statement.

“The greatest challenge in this exercise is, how do we build those partnerships between organizations that don’t necessarily have a common background, a common verbiage, a common set of terms, so how are we going to harness the power of governmental capacity to include our own department in defending critical infrastructure in the private sector of the United States,” Rogers said.

The exercise took place at a Joint Staff J7 facility in Suffolk, Va., which was designed to support a wide range of military tests and exercises.

According to a fact sheet, the Cyber Guard objectives are to:

• Improve the ability of forces to defend DOD networks, secure data and mitigate risks to missions.
• Be prepared to defend the U.S. homeland and vital interests from disruptive or destructive cyberattacks.
• Improve shared situational awareness between government agencies, the private sector and allied partners.
• Improve the ability to rapidly detect and effectively respond to a cyberattack on critical infrastructure, which requires whole-of-nation effort.
• Strengthen partnerships within government, allies and the private sector, which are vital to deter and respond to shared threats.
• Build and maintain ready Cyber Mission Force teams within DOD to conduct cyberspace operations.
• Continue efforts to build a Persistent Training Environment for cyberspace forces across the DOD, including a closed exercise network, training event planning, management and assessment, a live expert opposing force and transport layer to enable distributed participation in the environment. This Persistent Training Environment will be accessible to other U.S. government departments, allies and other partners and will set the foundation for whole-of-nation, full-spectrum cyberspace operations training

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