Pierluigi Paganini
November 18, 2014
The Department of Homeland Security is working on a new generation of self-repairing network that is able to be resilient to cyber offensives and continue operations in case of attack.
Enterprise Automated Security Environment (EASE), is the name of the project conducted by the DHS with industry for the development of an automated cyber defense system, as explained by Philip Quade, chief operating officer of the National Security Agency’s information assurance directorate, to the Nextgov.
Resiliency is considered by cyber security experts an essential characteristic of future networks, cyber attacks are becoming even more sophisticated and frequent and computer systems have to be improved to remain operative despite the ongoing offensive.
In the recent weeks, several attacks hit government networks, causing data breaches and temporarily shut down of the infrastructure, as happened in the attacks against the White House, the U.S. Postal Service and the National Weather Service.
The goal is the realization of a network of computers that is able to avoid disrupting activities and protect sensitive information.
Actually, government entities have deployed a series of internal controls to detect the early attacks and quickly recover from potential cyber attack. EASE is an ambitious project, despite it is in a very early stage, the Department of Homeland is spending a great effort into its realization.
The EASE project will integrate the ongoing project related to the network surveillance program conducted by the US Government that allocated $6 billion to support it.
“EASE is an evolving concept aimed at further automating the detection and prevention of cyber intrusions against federal government networks by creating a suite of technologies to augment existing methods,” DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee said in an email.
The surveillance program, dubbed “continuous diagnostics and mitigation,” is under development by US authorities to realize a real-time monitoring of all federal networks for threats.
“Homeland Security is leading its development, in coordination with private sector partners, as part of a long-term effort to strengthen existing cyber defense capabilities through better interoperability and shared situational awareness, real-time response, and the protection of privacy, civil rights and civil liberties,” Lee added.
The DHS’official anyway remarked that EASE is still an idea in an embryonic, but it is also a concrete need for the country and for this reason the US Government will continue to support it and any other program that could improve its cyber capabilities.
(Security Affairs – EASE, DHS)
