Navy’s CISO on delivering cyber readiness in disconnected environments

Securing and modernizing the U.S. Navy’s IT portfolio is no small task. As Tony Plater, the Navy’s chief information security officer (acting) notes upfront in a new FedScoop executive video panel, that portfolio includes some 800,000 endpoints, 200 disparate networks 200 data centers across the Navy and U.S. Marine Corps. That’s not to mention how much of that IT is out at sea and often disconnected from the cloud, including some 75 cloud vehicles now in use.

Plater says the Navy, nevertheless, is making headway by standardizing systems, unifying its approach to securing identities and data, and turning to automation to better secure and defend those systems.

“We want to do it in a way that makes the best out of innovation and modernization, which points back to how we’re using the cloud and the cloud office,” he says.

“Data and advanced analytics, and cloud and modernization and innovation – we weren’t using those words 10 years ago,” says Juliana Vida, when she was a commander in the Navy. “Now, (we’re seeing) this adoption by the government of the value that commercial technology can bring — particularly cloud technology that can drive agility, flexibility, efficiency, security — all of those things that in the past, the Department of Navy, and DOD used to think could only be created or managed by the government.”

Vida, now chief strategy advisor at Splunk, and Plater outline some of the important benefits the Navy is realizing by leveraging the cloud, deploying enterprise-wide services, and how real-time monitoring is helping the Navy better protect its networks and data.

Watch the full interview and learn more about how Splunk is helping the Defense Department “bring data to every mission.”

This video panel discussion was produced by Scoop News Group and FedScoop and underwritten by Splunk.