At a glance.
- The pros and cons of an independent cyber force.
- California passes bill aimed at reigning in data brokers.
The pros and cons of an independent cyber force.
The Pentagon's 2023 Cyber Strategy is classified, but last week the US Department of Defense (DoD) released an unclassified summary indicating the report emphasizes a need for force integration, a sharing of intel and resources across domains and combatant commands. The report states, “Cyber capabilities held in reserve or employed in isolation render little deterrent effect on their own.” Speaking at the Air & Space Forces Association's Air, Space & Cyber Conference, head of Air Forces Cyber Lieutenant General Kevin B. Kennedy echoed this sentiment, stating that cyber should be integrated into the more traditional defense domains. He explained that operators must “think about the effects that we can create in the cyber domain and [align] those into crisis and conflict planning in the normal processes that exist within the combatant commands for aligning those capabilities.
As Air & Space Forces Magazine notes, some stakeholders feel the solution is a military cyber force similar to the US Space Force, but Kennedy feels it’s a bit too early for that. “For me, when you start any kind of military capability and you think across domains, you generally start with some level of just deconfliction,” Kennedy stated. “Then you move into some level of coordination, synchronization, and then you want full-on synergy of the forces to get some effects upscaling. Where I’d say we are right now … [is] we’re definitely in the coordination and synchronization line.”
Deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy Mieke Eoyang also says there are challenges that must be addressed before a cyber force can be established, Breaking Defense reports. Eoyang told attendees at a recent Defense Writers Group event, “I think the question is that for people who think the cyber service is the answer to our…current challenges in cyber personnel management: be careful what you wish for. A cyber service might have some benefits in ease of administrative management, but we have a variety of…military services in the Department of Defense who perform a variety of missions.” She went on to say 2023’s National Defense Authorization Act requires the DoD to “study the prospect of a new force generation model” for US Cyber Command, and that the unique nature of the cyber career field will need to be considered. “I think that is a study that we are taking very seriously because it is important in the Department of Defense for us to get people right. And we are committed to doing that,” she stated.
California passes bill aimed at reigning in data brokers.
Also last week, the California state Senate passed the Delete Act, a privacy bill that would establish a centralized mechanism by which users can opt out of having their personal info collected by data brokers. The first-of-its-kind legislation would allow users to circumvent the arduous process of filing an individual request with each of the hundreds of brokers in operation, instead giving residents the power to opt out of all brokerage in one step. Requests would be submitted to California’s Privacy Protection Agency, requiring all registered data brokers to delete the personal data of consumers every thirty-one days and prohibiting data brokers from sharing or selling new info collected from the consumer. Failure to comply could lead to civil penalties and administrative fines.
Washington has attempted to pass similar legislation at the federal level, but so far these bills have not had much success, leaving California to take the matter into its own hands. California already set a precedent for state-level privacy legislation with the passage of the California Consumer Privacy Act in 2018, and the hope is that the Delete Act could motivate federal legislators to follow in the state’s footsteps. Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, managing director of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, told CyberScoop, “If Californians get a right to centrally opt-out from data brokers, there’s a big question of what this would mean for these ongoing federal conversations. It could mean more pressure for federal action, either to spread this mechanism to citizens of other states, or otherwise standardize something similar across the country.”