Collecting data is integral to intelligence operations. IC Chief Data Officer Lori Wade noted the challenges and strategies for achieving data centricity within the IC, including the importance of well-managed data.

“We talk about data as a strategic asset, but only if it’s managed well. Otherwise, it becomes a liability, a liability from external and insider threats,” said Wade. “It also becomes a liability from a cost perspective.”

CIOs from across the IC said zero-trust implementation is critical to strong cybersecurity in the interest of national security. National Security Agency Chief Financial Manager Jennifer Kron, who previously served as deputy CIO, said the Defense Industrial Base plays a key part in cybersecurity, while Central Intelligence Agency CIO Ryon Klotz said the IC needs to be up to date on zero trust. 

“Developing a common understanding of a basic maturity model for zero trust allows us to commonly evaluate where we are on the various pillars of zero trust and then target investments to enhance the maturity across [the IC],” said Klotz. 

Brian “Stretch” Meyer, senior director of field engineering at Axonius Federal, said he sees the future of cybersecurity focusing on expanding attack surface management beyond devices to include assets and leveraging AI for proactive threat detection.

“With AI and a human together, there’s going to be a lot of future and that’s going to really help drive when AI is tying into these tools,” said Meyer. “The fundamentals of correlating the data together and looking at it that way is something that the industry just hasn’t been in the habit of doing, and it’s been eye opening when they do start to do it.”

The elements of the IC work together to share information and build cybersecurity across the enterprise. Integrating cyber defenses is key to the IC mission, said Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) CISO Tim Sydnor and Senior Technical Advisor Stephen Kensinger

“It’s the integration, and by that, I mean the partnerships that we have across our community, so intimately partnered with our IC, fellow agencies, our peers in that space,” Sydnor told GovCIO Media & Research. “It’s not just DIA, it’s a reflection of how we are integrating across our community – across our DOD partners – to deliver capability.”

Artificial intelligence is augmenting the way the IC is doing its job for collection, analysis and distribution of intelligence data. Office of the Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence Division CIO Christopher Page said AI gives the Navy an advantage by increasing the volume, variety, velocity and veracity of collected data.

“We’re no longer limited to a single discipline,” said Page. “We can work across all the intelligence collection disciplines, whether it’s geospatial intelligence, signals intelligence or all the other things that we can do these days from the platforms.”