Pentagon Looks to Industry For Cyber Tools and Talent.

• Author: Harper, Jon

The Pentagon intends to lean on commercial industry as it beefs up its cyber capabilities in the face of growing threats.

The Defense Department is investing heavily in information technology. Its budget plan calls for spending $38.2 billion on IT in fiscal year 2017, including $6.8 billion on cyberspace operations.

Going forward, Defense Department officials want to enhance ties with nontraditional industry to bring new technologies and experts into the force.

"Much of the innovation today being driven in the cyber and IT business is coming from the commercial sector," Defense Department chief information officer Terry Halvorsen told members of the House Armed Services Committee in March. "That partnership that we continue to strengthen is a key to us getting the right innovation and getting it on time."

As part of this effort, Cyber Command has established a "point of partnership" in Silicon Valley within the Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental outpost that Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter established last year. The command plans to expand this outreach effort to other tech hubs, including Boston, Cybercom commander Adm. Michael Rogers told lawmakers.

Defense officials hope to create a revolving door type of environment where cyber experts from the private sector can come work for the U.S. military for a fixed period of time before returning to their companies.

"We really want to be able to bring them in and have them sit in a position for a year, being able to execute some decisions within the department, and then go back to industry, just like I think there's a market space today for us to have some of our civilian employees go to industry" Halvorsen said.

"We want more of an in and out, back and forth. And you could really see the career path in cyber IT changing so that it's not an all-civilian or all-government career path, but a much more combined career path," he added.

To facilitate that, Congress needs to act, he told lawmakers. "I do think we will need some legislation that probably changes slightly the rule sets about what we're allowed to do with the industry people."

When it comes to IT, the Defense Department's science and technology spending is heavily influenced by what the private sector is doing, Halvorsen said.

"I want to focus our S&T dollars around the areas the industry isn't going to focus on, and that's going to be on the weapons systems and top-level security systems where there is not yet much play in the commercial sector," he said. "I think our budget reflects that that's where our emphasis is."

In a constrained fiscal environment, there won't be much spending on technology that the private sector is already developing, he said.

"I think I can get that same innovation ... by strengthening our relationships...