WASHINGTON — The military has relied heavily on contractors for highly technical work to develop software for cyber operators. But the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps have found that in-house engineers and tool developers can quickly create mission capabilities to improve threat response times and mission outcomes.
While industry software specialists continue to complement the military’s internal efforts, each of the service cyber components that feed up to U.S. Cyber Command has organized teams of coders, engineers and tool developers. They build rapid prototypes and new solutions, extend existing platforms, conduct vulnerability research and malware analysis, and test and evaluate the software.
This personnel support the cyber mission force operations and provide wide expertise for their services on cyberspace and vulnerabilities.
For example, Fleet Cyber Command said it provided requested developers to Naval Sea Systems Command to determine how adversaries might compromise a shipboard system. Within a week, the developers identified potential cyber vulnerabilities and suggested corrections.
Army coders figure out how to best secure weapons systems and give combatant commanders effective options that align with their operations. Some examples include implementing systems designed to defend soldiers from small unmanned aerial system attacks and analyzing weapon systems’ attack surface to patch vulnerabilities.
