U.S. Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer DeAnna Melleby, information systems security officer for the Coast Guard Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Information Technology unit at Coast Guard Base Boston, peers through a space in a server April 20, 2017. Melleby and her team have a number of countermeasures they use to keep the Coast Guard computer network secure, including a “sniffer” program that identifies when USBs or cell phones are plugged into the system.
COAST GUARD CYBERSECURITY Although the U.S. Coast Guard is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rather than the Department of Defense (DOD), Coast Guard Cyber Command (CGCYBER) is a service component of DOD’s joint U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). Stood up in 2013, it also works closely with DHS and the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, which is responsible for critical infrastructure response for the nation. Specifically, CGCYBER works on anything dealing with the maritime environment and the U.S. Marine Transportation System (MTS). Its mandate was laid out in the 2015 “U.S. Coast Guard Cyber Strategy”: “We will
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Coast Guard OUTLOOK
ensure the security of our cyberspace, maintain superiority over our adversaries, and safeguard our Nation’s critical maritime infrastructure.” “For enabling ops, we’re centralizing operations of the enterprise platform – defensive and DOD Information Network Operations [DODINOP] – under CGCYBER, which was just formalized in February 2017,” Cmdr. Lars McCarter, CGCYBER director of operations, explained. “We’ve aligned defending cyberspace with those who do operations and maintenance to better enable operations for the service.” One piece of that is providing and supporting the enterprise platform, now centralized in the Network
U.S. COAST GUARD PHOTO BY PETTY OFFICER 3RD CLASS ANDREW BARRESI
By J.R. WILSON
