Army honors security work

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The Army this week issued its first awards to service personnel and contractors for excellence in information assurance.

Col. Thaddeus Dmuchowski, director of information assurance for the Army, said the honors recognize "innovation that brought security under great duress." He said Army information technology officials also hope the awards call attention to information security servicewide.

The information assurance awards, presented at the Directorate of Information Management/Army Knowledge Management conference sponsored by the Army and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, come in a year in which service IT officials said Army networks experienced daily, persistent cyberattacks.

Army IT officials issued individual and unit awards. They include:

Military: All IT soldiers deployed in support of the war on terrorism.

Civilian: Gregory Bigelow, senior technical expert and network and security program manager for the Corps of Engineers Enterprise Infrastructure Services Program. He designed the security infrastructure for Army Corps of Engineers networks.

Honorable Mention: Angela Rhodes, Army Corps of Engineers, Huntington District in West Virginia. She led an effort to accredit all the office's IT assets, started a group to share information assurance tips and developed a system update utility for the patching of identified vulnerabilities.

Contractor: James Lynch, senior policy analyst in the Army Common Access Card-Public Key Infrastructure programs division of the Information Assurance Directorate. He developed three policies including the use of digital signatures and encryption, and the purchase and use of personal digital assistant devices.

Honorable Mention: Eleanor Brings, senior customer support analyst, Security and Information Assurance Community of Practice, Directorate of Corporate Information, Army Corps of Engineers in Washington, D.C. She implemented the Compliance Reporting Database Version 2.

UNIT

Huntington District Information Management, Office/Computer Security Team in West Virginia. The unit developed and implemented an automated, multilayered approach to patch, application deployment and verification of information assurance vulnerability alerts.

Honorable Mention: Information Assurance Office, Information Support Activity in St. Louis. The unit developed a multimedia information assurance campaign and hosted an information assurance workshop.