Source: Eric Chabrow, Managing Editor, GovInfoSecurity
A few weeks back, a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point asked Army Lt. Col. Gregory Conti which service branch he should join to specialize in cyberwarfare. Conti, an academy computer science professor and head of its Cyberwarfare Research Center, paused and realized he couldn’t answer the cadet’s question. “There isn’t one,” he said.
“Cyberwarfare entirely new thing, and it’s very different than being a pilot in the Air Force or having a ship with weapons on it or charging up a hill, so culturally, there’s a big gap there,” Conti said in an interview with GovInfoSecurity.com (transcript below). “My instinct tells me that one potential solution would be to create a new service, one where technical expertise is valued.”
Creating a separate, cyberwarfare branch is highly unlikely, at least anytime soon, so Conti and other computer science faculty members teaching at West Point do what they can, creating a curriculum that requires all cadets to take at least two cybersecurity courses and imbeds cybersecurity into nearly every computer science course the academy offers.
In an interview with GovInfoSecurity.com, Conti discusses the:
Importance of cybersecurity training at the academy, not just to computer science majors, but to all cadets;
Differences between cybersecurity and cyberwarfare; and
Idea of creating a fourth military branch dedicated to defending the nation’s IT assets.