DISA seeks detection system

DISA notice

The Defense Information Systems Agency last week announced plans to work with GRC International Inc. to develop a system to help detect, analyze and defend against cyberattacks across Defense Department networks.

In a March 27 notice, DISA officials said the department needed a system to "monitor and analyze the immense amounts of computer traffic and detect the missions of hacker attacks and denial-of-service attacks launched against DISA's Global Information Grid daily." The grid includes unclassified and classified DOD networks worldwide.

Numerous individual defense organizations already have intrusion-detection systems on their networks, but DOD has only just begun integrating such protection across the department.

Integration allows officials to recognize more complex attacks after looking at data across multiple units, said Becky Bace, former head of the National Security Agency's Computer Misuse and Anomaly Detection research program.

For the same reason, the General Services Administration's Federal Computer Incident Response Center is working with the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University to develop a similar analysis and correlation capability for civilian agencies, said Sallie McDonald, associate commissioner of information assurance and critical infrastructure protection at GSA.

Officials from DISA and GRC In.ternational could not be reached for comment.