US Navy Experiments With Secure Cloud Computing

August 20, 2009 / G C Network /

“Cash for Clunkers” Should Have Used the Cloud!

By G C Network | August 24, 2009

Rich Bruklis wrote an excellent essy on how the government missed a perfect opportunity to use cloud computing. In “Cloud Opportunity Missed” he writes: “It appears that the voucher system…

US Navy Experiments With Secure Cloud Computing

By G C Network | August 20, 2009

This week in San Diego, CA the US Navy held the initial planning conference for Trident Warrior ’10. The Trident Warrior series is the premier annual FORCEnet Sea Trial Event…

GSA To Present On Cloud Initiative at NCOIC Plenary

By G C Network | August 13, 2009

A General Services Administration (GSA) representative is now scheduled to provide a briefing on the agency’s cloud computing initiative during a “Best Practices for Cloud Initiatives using Storefronts” session on…

FAA CIO Focuses on Cybersecurity

By G C Network | August 12, 2009

During this week Federal Executive Forum, FAA CIO Dave Bowen mentioned protection against software vulnerabilities, wireless intrusion and website vulnerabilities as his top cybersecurity priorities. As the Assistant Administrator for…

DHS Asst. Secretary Addresses Cybersecurity Priorities

By G C Network | August 11, 2009

Greg Schaffer, Assistant Secretary for CyberSecurity & Communications for the US Department of Homeland Security, sees Trusted Internet Connections, EINSTEIN, and front line defense of the nation’s networks as top…

US DoD Chief Security Officer on Cybersecurity Priorities

By G C Network | August 10, 2009

In a Federal Executive Forum interview, Robert Lentz, Chief Security Officer for the US Department of Defense, highlighted the departments cybersecurity priorities. Mr. Lentz is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of…

Twitter Under Denial of Service Attack

By G C Network | August 6, 2009

Multiple sources are reporting that Twitter continues to be under a denial of service attack. Some are speculating that this represents the power of a coordinated bot network attack. For…

NCOIC Holding Full Day Cloud Computing Session

By G C Network | August 5, 2009

The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) will be holding a one-day cloud computing session during its plenary meetings, 21-25 September at the Fair Lakes Hyatt in Fairfax, VA. A…

Sevatec a New Player in the Federal Cloud Computing Market

By G C Network | August 3, 2009

Just in time for the new Federal Cloud Computing Storefront, Sevatec, Inc. is announcing the development of a toolkit to help federal agencies transform their enterprise architectures to cloud computing…

GSA Releases Cloud Computing RFQ

By G C Network | July 31, 2009

Following through on a much anticipated action, GSA released their Cloud Computing Request For Quotation (RFQ) today. Cloud computing is a major part of President Obama’s reform effort and this…

This week in San Diego, CA the US Navy held the initial planning conference for Trident Warrior ’10. The Trident Warrior series is the premier annual FORCEnet Sea Trial Event sponsored by Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM). FORCEnet’s experimental results are incorporated into a definitive technical report used to develop Military Utility Assessment (MUA) recommendations. This report is provided to the Sea Trial Executive Steering Group (STESG) for consideration and acquisition recommendations.
The primary goal of FORCEnet experimentation is to influence accelerated fielding of improved Command and Control (C2) capabilities to the fleet through Program of Record (POR) acceleration or transition of new technologies into PORs. Additional goals include evaluating Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP) that best exploit, promote, expand, and incorporate new FORCEnet capabilities in support of optimizing execution of Naval operations; increasing warfighter effectiveness through discovery and development of enhanced capabilities; and encouraging Government, industry, and academia use of experimentation to advance new concepts and capabilities.
This year, for the first time, the event has been expanded to include a lab-based venue designed to experiment with lower Technology Readiness Level (TRL) candidates. The goal of this added activity is to demonstrate technologies that have the potential to fill mid- and far-term warfighting gaps. One of these lab-based experiments is secure cloud computing.
Sponsored by Dataline, LLC, the Secure Cloud Computing experiment has been designed to explore the use of a commercial Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform as a viable means of supporting a specified subset of US Navy mission requirements for global connectivity, server failover and application access. Goals for the experiment include:
  • Demonstrating the establishment and use of trusted communication paths on a global public computing infrastructure; and
  • Demonstrating dynamic, mission driven, provisioning of information via trusted communication paths on a global public computing infrastructure
Working with Amazon Web Services and Security First Corporation, the Dataline-led team will explore the ability of cloud computing technologies to support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief military missions. As currently planned, the test scenario will simulate the secure use of a cloud-based collaboration environment. Both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration technologies will be leveraged. Information and data access among multiple operational groups will be dynamically managed based on simulated ad-hoc mission requirements. Expected mission advantages of this new approach include:
  • Increased IT infrastructure resiliency through the use of dynamic and automatic provisioning of compute and storage resources;
  • The ability to provide virtually unlimited IT infrastructure scalability through the elastic nature of an infrastructure-as-a-service platform; and
  • Increased mission flexibility through a globally distributed and accessible IT infrastructure that is also open to use by Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), civilian first responders and non-US military forces.
The use of a government sponsored “Red Team” is also being requested as a means of validating the security of the proposed infrastructure.
For further information on the Trident Warrior lab based experiments, please contact LCDR Caroline Lahman ( [email protected] )
For further information on the Dataline Secure Cloud Computing experiment, please contact Kevin Jackson ([email protected])

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – KLJ )
TRIDENT WARRIOR ’09

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
Posted in

G C Network

3 Comments

  1. Urs E. Gattiker on August 21, 2009 at 6:53 am

    This is an interesting post – thanks a million but having defence forces use computing in a cloud services such as Amazon or those from Security First raises some risk management issues, does it not?

    Systemic risk management and how it applies to computing in a cloud issues is also addressed here:

    http://ComMetrics.com/?p=2091

    Thanks for this post.



  2. L. Venkata Subramaniam on August 25, 2009 at 12:45 pm

    Security on the cloud seems to be a challenge? Do you think this will be a problem for the defence forces to adopt cloud in a big way?



  3. Kevin L. Jackson on August 25, 2009 at 12:51 pm

    Defense forces are using cloud computing technology today. I see it expanding in both public and private cloud use cases. Missions involving interaction with non-military organizations (i.e. humanitarian assistance), will leverage public clouds for reduced cost and improved access. Other missions will stick to private clouds built and maintained by the military..



Cloud Computing

Cybersecurity