Collaborative information sharing with allies is a vital component of contemporary warfare, and also a key component of the Defense Department’s policy.  

However, in the face of escalating geopolitical tensions and increased risk of cyberattacks, the DoD and its partners must assess and strengthen strategies to maintain data security and network resilience even in the most challenging and complex cross domain environments. 

Here are two proactive approaches the Pentagon can embrace to advance these priorities and secure its mission partner environments (MPE) for seamless mission-critical information flow:  

1. Adopt secure-by-design principles

The first approach to fortifying MPEs is the practice of “secure-by-design.” 

Secure-by-design is a fundamental element of the White House’s cyber implementation plan and is a new model addressing security gaps by embedding security at the core of agency operations and throughout management processes, rather than treating it as a technical add-on.  

To reduce the attack aperture and risk, secure-by-design combines technology, tools and processes for an approach that goes beyond traditional software protection. Key components include hardening the software build environment and internal systems, improving endpoint security and data loss prevention measures, deploying least-privilege access protocols, and scheduling regular system testing through red teams. 

Crucially, secure-by-design expands upon the principles of zero trust and requires organizations to work from an “assume breach” position.  

Assume breach means supposing something has been breached (a user or asset), assessing potential outcomes, and determining how to limit exposure. By prioritizing this mindset, the DoD can deploy the right processes, people and technology to proactively observe MPEs for anomalies and potential vulnerabilities. 

Indeed, in early 2023, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Security Agency, FBI, the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre, and other international bodies urged agencies and the private sector to make secure-by-design a focal point of product design and development processes: “IT departments should be empowered to develop purchasing criteria that emphasize the importance of Secure-by-Design … practices.” 

2. Take an observability approach to IT monitoring and management

To facilitate information exchange and strategic collaboration, combatant commands depend on a distributed and complex IT environment, made up of both cloud and on-premises infrastructure. As the trend of global coalitions continues, these hybrid IT environments create worrisome challenges for IT professionals.  

According to a report by the International Data Corporation (IDC), IT pros recognize they need tools to ensure consistent policies and performance across all platforms and end users. Nonetheless, they confront challenges as indicated by an annual study by SolarWinds, where 54% of surveyed IT pros report a lack of visibility into the majority of their applications and infrastructure. This deficiency impacts their ability to conduct anomaly detection, root-cause analysis, and other critical processes aimed at ensuring the availability, performance and security of information passed to or from MPEs. 

As a result, full-stack observability is increasingly becoming the answer for federal IT teams charged with managing greater levels of complexity in these diverse and distributed environments.  

Observability differs from conventional monitoring because it takes a more proactive and holistic approach to network management. With observability, IT professionals gain a fuller picture of the total attack surface, encompassing fragmented networks, applications, databases and infrastructure – including hybrid environments – in real time. 

Observability leverages artificial intelligence, machine learning and associated technologies to gather, unify and analyze vast data sets from across multiple domains. This leads to fast and accurate performance analysis and issue resolution. It also offers actionable intelligence, empowering teams to anticipate potential problems, like configuration drift or other vulnerabilities, before they happen for rapid troubleshooting. Additionally, it can also autonomously trigger mitigation workflows, freeing IT teams to focus on IT optimization strategies. 

Agencies who are part of the MPE can utilize observability to enhance their security, safeguard sensitive data sharing, and reduce the potential for breaches. 

The window for action is narrowing

In the rapidly evolving landscape of modern warfare and the escalating dependence on virtual mission collaboration, the demand for a more secure MPE has become exceedingly pressing. The moment to take action has arrived. 

With secure-by-design as a guiding principle coupled with observability, DoD and its coalition partners can achieve this objective and build collaborative warfare systems that prioritize transparency, visibility and security to the fullest extent. 

Chip Daniels is vice president of government affairs at SolarWinds. 

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