SUPPORTING THE FUTURE FORCE
USING WHAT WE PAY FOR?
If you buy a new computer at a big-box retailer, chances are good that it will come preloaded with lots of software. Some you will use frequently (the web browser, for instance), but other pieces of soft- ware, you may never open. It is a package deal, so there’s no use declining the spreadsheet software you didn’t want. The price won’t change.
When it comes to the Army’s cyber protection teams, however, their deployable cyber kits aren’t purchased that way. Each processing unit (core), each tool and each piece of software is specifi- cally chosen and purchased for the identified threat.
Joe Kobsar, director of Applied Cyber Technologies at PEO EIS, wants to understand how effectively those tools are being used to make sure govern- ment dollars are spent wisely.
After the kits are deployed and used, they are returned to Defensive Cyber Operations. “When the kits are done, they come back to us and we extrapolate the data,” Kobsar said; the team phys- ically connects the kits to computers at the Forge to extract the data, because the Army’s networks aren’t generally equipped to handle the amount of data the kits contain and some regulations prevent this kind of cyber data from being sent electroni- cally. “We want to find out which tools are being used, so we can better pinpoint and refine our numbers. How many software licenses do we need? Are we actually using all these software licenses we’re procuring? Right now, the answer is, ‘We don’t know.’ In acquisition, for us to justify spend- ing those dollars, we need that data.”
That data can also help with size, weight and power, the trio of competing forces for computers. Increased processing power might mean a larger, heavier product, so it’s about determining the right balance of all three. If DCO can eliminate unused software and tools on those cyber kits, it frees up memory for other uses.
—ELLEN SUMMEY
NO LONGER AT ARM’S LENGTH Under traditional, FAR-based contracting, the government is limited in how it can communicate with industry. Te idea is to ensure fairness, but this approach can be problematic for tech- nology and cybersecurity projects. “Everything is firewalled,” Helmore said. “You can’t tell one contractor about another contractor.” Tis is sometimes referred to as the “arm’s length” principle, which would discourage any sort of collaborative rela- tionship between buyer and seller in the name of bargaining.
“We don’t have that,” said Helmore. “Te purpose of the [other- transaction authority] was to collaborate—to find a way to make industry feel like they can come to you and foster an idea with you, refine that idea, turn it into a prototype capability.” In fact, the Forge team hopes to encourage collaboration between contractors through the System of Systems Consortium, which serves as the administrative organization for its other-transaction authority. In simple terms, the consortium is the prime contrac- tor for the Forge, and it handles day-to-day administration and management of all subcontracts. Tis arrangement simplifies communication between the Forge and consortium members.
“Quite a few times,” Helmore said, “we have recognized the poten- tial for collaboration with another consortium member, and we have directly recommended that they consider working together to strengthen their offering or solution. On one of our most recent projects, we took a piece of hardware that was being built by one company but was missing a good software component, and we put those two companies together, and that end result was recently awarded a production contract for us.”
“We’ve got to turn to our industry might,” Helmore added. “Use the brains of all the commercial entities that are out there, that have been working on these problems and are analyzing it, and put them together. Tat’s what the Forge is about.”
REDUCING RISKS THROUGH EXPERIMENTATION When you’re dealing with new technologies and planning to intro- duce them to the Army’s network, there is inherent risk. How do cyber experts know the products are trustworthy and effective? Te Forge provides a “sandbox,” or cyber test environment, to allow for safe, controlled access to government systems. Tis way, industry can demonstrate how well their solutions would actually monitor and detect attacks on the Army’s networks.
“We meet with hundreds of companies and they always say, ‘We have the best product, just use our product,’ ” Helmore said.
https://asc.ar my.mil 51
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