Defense Department cybersecurity pilots conducted with Internet service providers and telecom companies to protect portions of the defense industrial base should be expanded to include behavioral pattern-based threat detection, says the report accompanying the Senate Armed Services Committee's fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill.

The committee unanimously approved the bill June 17, authorizing $682.5 billion for Defense and Energy department programs in the coming fiscal year: $553 billion for the DoD base budget, $117.8 for overseas operations, and $18.1 billion for Energy nuclear stockpile programs. The budget trims $6.4 billion from requested fiscal 2012 DoD spending, with $5.9 billion of that coming from the base budget. The bill now faces a vote by the full Senate and reconciliation with the House-approved authorization measure, which would permit the DoD to spend $690.1 in the coming fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.

The report language notes that the DoD is already engaged in setting up cybersecurity pilots with ISPs to test their ability to employ classified threat signatures on private-sector infrastructure. But, the pilots should also test ISP-generated behavioral pattern-threat capabilities, the report says.

The Homeland Security Department and the Office of Management and Budget already have underway a program to use ISPs as the foundation for the defense of the .gov domain, with the program employing signature and behavioral-pattern capabilities, the report adds.

"The commercial discovery technologies that the committee seeks to demonstrate and incorporate into DoD network defenses could be applied to .gov networks through MTIPS," the report says, referring to the Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Services program that's part of the General Service Administration's Networx telecommunications contract.

The report also says that responsibility for the defense industrial base cybersecurity pilots should reside under the office of the DoD chief information officer. Currently, the CIO and the undersecretary of defense for policy have overseen the pilots, the report says.

It directs the CIO to develop a management structure and transition process for the pilots into the acquisition process or operational use, although it adds that it "could support" a delegation of authority by the CIO to another component within the office of the secretary of defense.

For more:
- go to the THOMAS page for the bill, S. 1253
- go directly to the report

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