Pacific Cyber Leaders Urge Units to Move Faster on Zero Trust

Honolulu — U.S. cybersecurity leaders based in the Pacific theater pushed for greater urgency to move networks to zero trust environments to streamline data sharing amongst allies.

The U.S. will depend on a wide range of allies in a war based in the Pacific. What’s called the “tyranny of distance” will force military leaders to depend heavily on their networks as both manned and unmanned systems will execute combat operations, cyber leaders told audiences at AFCEA’s TechNet Indo-Pacific conference held this week.

Marine Col. Jared Voneida, C4 operations division chief at Indo-Pacific Command J63, listed zero trust and AI as his two top technologies that will offer the most breakthrough potential for U.S. forces in the Pacific theater.

“It will allow us to share with allies and partners easier, but it will also force us to remake our networks and make them more streamlined and simple,” Voneida said.

Voneida and other Pacific cyber leaders said more must be done to transition to zero trust and achieve the DOW mandate.

Marine Col. Toby Hlad, commander of Defense Information Systems Regional Field Command Pacific (DISA PAC), identified training as a significant need, especially as technologies continue to evolve.

“We need to be going at light speed for training, for a zero trust department,” Hlad said. “How are we training our young military members of civilians, contractors, to do an integrated defense of a zero trust cloud environment? Because that’s where the networks, that’s where the environment is going.”

Large-scale Pacific exercises have proven the need to make it easier to share data between services and allies. The movement from a network-centric environment to a data-centric environment is driving the urgency to secure how the military transmits this data, Hlad said.

The further dependence on manned and unmanned teaming has further challenged the U.S. military to move to a zero trust environment more quickly, cyber officials said.

“First, I would say we need to focus on getting to zero trust,” said Navy Capt. Oscar Simmons, assistant chief of staff J6 at U.S Forces Japan. “It is a mandate within the Department of War that we get to that point, and we need to process the fact that information is only provided to people who individually have access to that, ensuring that only our partners that we want have access to the information and … adversaries will not gain.”