New Disk Allows Military Computers To Start Up Faster and Safer

The Pentagon expects to release by the first quarter of 2012 a single disk containing licensed, standard security settings that all troops can pop into desktops to quickly access the information they need during battle without messing with configurations, Defense Department officials said on Thursday.

The effort is an offshoot of several, existing so-called golden masters, typically code stored on a DVD disk, that are in use servicewide within the Army, at U.S. Central Command and several other Defense agencies. Golden masters are replicas of operating systems and security settings required to run a computer safely.

"The unified master gold disk: that's an important disk to remember because there are a lot of gold disks around," Jim Clausen, co-chair of the Defense Enterprise Software Initiative working group, said at an event hosted by the SANS Institute, a security research center, and Government Executive Media Group, which includes Nextgov. This one will be issued by a central Defense office for use on military PCs departmentwide.

Pentagon officials plan to issue updates every six months but will leave it to each component to apply its own patches or bug fixes that protect against newly-discovered software vulnerabilities.

In the future, the department may require that contractors integrate the new standard disk into all computers, Clausen said.

"It will in time" be mobile-ready too, added David DeVries, deputy Defense chief information officer for information management, integration and technology. "We take out of the equation the many different certification processes -- that gives time back to the warfighter."