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16 Oct 2009
Military supplier Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $31m (£19m) deal to develop new cyber security systems.
The company said that it will enlist the support of Microsoft, Juniper Networks and researchers from Stanford University for the project, which is being commissioned by the US military.
Among the aims of the campaign will be to develop new methods for securing networks and managing bandwidth, along with a range of access and policy management tools.
The project could benefit consumer and enterprise users as the technologies developed could be adopted into various commercial products and systems.
"With systems from land, air and space connected to the Global Information Grid, cyber security is vital to every aspect of military operations, and new network threats and attacks require revolutionary protection concepts," said John Mengucci, president of information systems and global services at Lockheed Martin.
Improving network, server and end-point security has become a major government priority under the Obama administration.
Much of the effort has been driven by the growing toll of government data losses and breaches, along with the growing fears of large-scale cyber attacks from hackers and government-operated hostile groups.
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Whose house of cards has the most to lose in this light of day? For those who know what I know, this bill makes total sense. Kinda like Nazi mass murderers trying to hide their past deeds and future plans from the people. The German Nazis didn't have the internet, but they did have books. The fascists of today are one in the same. The internet is the single most powerful weapon to defend ourselves with. If Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, amongst others, had the internet in their time, what would they have done with it? Destroying it, is too obvious. To CONTROL it, in the name of national security is an easy sell to the ignorant masses. Give it a name like CYBER SECURITY. Who can be against that? The saxon game is slow. But that is why it seems to work. Little by little, liberty will fail, if people stay ignorant in apathy. If you fail to wake up, you will love your new home. If you wake up at all, you'll realize that you've lost everything, except freedom.
Posted by: tim gallien 17 Oct 2009
Lockheed-Martin taps govt for $31 million - bye bye money...
There's 32 million going down the sinkhole and helping keep LM's stock shares inflated. I have attended meetings where LM's brilliant security engineers presented proposals to management for funding. I could not believe how uninformed these people were about 'things that already existed elsewhere' in the public and commercial domain. Just to give one example, one lacky presented to management a request for just a few million bucks so that they could develop a database of common vulnerabilities. Now, if you have even the slightest knowledge of the security scene, you should be rolling on the floor laughing - as there already exist a number of public and government funded databases that perform that exact role. After hearing that presentation I had steam coming out of my ears as unknowing senior managers nodded and commented about what a great idea it was. Unfortunately, as a guest at that meeting with no stature to jump on my chair and slap some reality into their Dilbert management-like minds, I had to bite my tongue and listen to the next presentation for funding from management. All I can say is that the brilliant security engineers of LM made one presentation after another where they were proposing to re-invent something that already was in existence. In some cases they were proposing to invest LM dollars creating things that were basically already in the open source stream or being done in the public domain. To make this even more simple to understand, imagine attending a meeting where the LM engineers were making a pitch to LM senior management to create something that sounded a lot like Twitter... or something like e-Bay... or something like Facebook. Any half-twit with any knowledge of the Internet would know that they already were in existence. The proposal was either a complete attempt to scam management into pouring development money into something that already existed OR ELSE the engineers proposing these duplicative projects were so off the grid that they truly had no idea that they weren't proposing anything original. I left the meeting near the end... with my blood pressure reaching the point where it was going to pop like a thermometer that had been overheated. I did finally get a chance to chat with one of the Senior VPs who out of courtesy to my knowledge asked what I had thought of the presentations. In no short words I said that I would call a meeting with all those clowns and rip them apart one by one to find out what they were trying to pull off on the senior managers ( who obviously were being easily bafflegabbed by the cyber-engineers ). And if I did not like their explanations I would probably fire each and every presenter that day who tried to lure management to invest millions of corporate dollars on their seriously flawed or suspicious proposals. I can hardly wait to see what innovative proposals the LM cyber-engineers will dream up in order to get a piece of that $31 million directed over to some totally ludicrous projects. Hmmm... let's see... : a ) they will create a firewall... hmm already done in spades by others but what the heck... b ) they will create an anti-virus program... hmmm already done but what the heck an LM anti-virus program just has to be better right... c ) they will create a CERT type branch to disseminate information... hmmm already done but what the heck an LM-CERT just has to be better d ) they will create their own CISSP program... oh wait they already dd that in order to not have to spend money training their security people to meet the CISSP standards. e ) they will create more secure routers... oh wait they already did that by taking CISCO routers and by removing the Cisco product branding off them and slapping their own stealth branding on them... I don't think I will be expecting to see any innovative products rolling out of the LM-CyberSecurity-Skunkworks. If anything, LM will spend some of that $31 million buying out some small, vulnerable and underfunded security hardware vendor and rebranding those products under the LM brand label. I wish I could be more positive to this news of LM landing funding for 'their' cybersecurity' project. But unfortunately I still have steam spewing out of my ears based on LM's past history. Hopefully LM has some better security watch guards on duty to warn the senior management when their cyber-engineers make their proposals to management for funding of their cyber-schemes.
Posted by: Sloth Vader 17 Oct 2009