From Ellen Nakashima, the Washington Post:  The Pentagon is exploring whether to expand a pilot program that protects the networks of defense contractors to include other companies, and even those in industries that serve mainly civilians. But some private sector officials are not sure that the Defense Department should lead the effort.

Speaking at a conference in Baltimore this week, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said that the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) Cyber Pilot, which currently involves 20 large defense companies, is already showing signs of success. It relies on classified threat “signatures” or data that can help detect malicious code before it penetrates a network. . . .

The voluntary 90-day pilot, which the Pentagon said should be completed by early fall, has already shown that “it stops hundreds of signatures that we wouldn’t previously have seen,” Lynn said. “It appears to be cost-effective. . . .”

Speaking at a conference run by the Defense Information Systems Agency, Lynn expressed significant concern “that over the past decade we’ve lost terabytes of data to foreign intruders, foreign intelligence services, to attacks on corporate networks of defense companies.” A great deal of it, he said, “concerns our most sensitive systems– aircraft avionics, surveillance technologies, satellite communication systems, and network security protocols.”

As a result, he said, the Pentagon is considering expanding the pilot to more defense companies, and discussing with other agencies whether to “apply this same concept to other sectors, whether it’s the power sector, nuclear energy, the transportation sector or the financial sector.’’  (photo: AP)

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