What are the threats, weapons, and technologies shaping the U.S. military’s strategic priorities and tactical considerations in 2024? Defense One explores these questions and more with top leaders from the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Space Force in its fifth annual State of Defense series.

Cybersecurity is a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s priorities and has never been more important to securing the nation’s infrastructure and data from cyber threats than it is today. Government IT leaders must remain vigilant against near-constant cyber threats while maintaining legacy systems and securing a remote workforce. In this workshop, Nextgov/FCW will examine the most important trends in cybersecurity across the f...

As the government moves increasingly towards digital infrastructure, geopolitical tensions rise, and individuals access more endpoints from more locations than ever before, a strong cyber posture must be embedded in everything agencies do. Policy guidance such as the cyber executive order, NIST’s updated security risk framework, and the Cyberspace Solarium’s recommendations offer strategic direction while tactical playbooks such as...

When DOD rolled out its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program in 2020, it was designed to secure the Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in systems used by contractors in Defense Industrial Base that support business and warfighting efforts. Initially, an independent accreditation body was to certify a group of third-party assessment organizations. The plan ran into a number of obstacles as industry organizations questioned...

Just as technology has been constantly changing and evolving, so has DOD’s strategy for the best way to modernize the tools it provides to the warfighters and their business support services. In 2018, the agency released a strategy to use cloud technology, which has been revised over the intervening years to reflect the cancellation of the JEDI contract and the adoption of DOD’s Software Modernization Strategy. The new strategy set...

The nation’s defense systems and capabilities are challenged as never before-- on the ground, in the air, on the seas, in cyberspace and real space. The military must rise to those challenges on all those fronts to ensure the nation is secure. Information technology remains warfighters’ and defenders’ powerful primary tool for their jobs. From cloud computing, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, to machine learning and...