Photo By Joseph Bullinger | Defense Health Agency (DHA) Chief Information Officer Patrick Flanders cuts the ribbon...... read more read more
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Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony April 28 to celebrate the grand opening of a newly renovated cybersecurity operations center (CSOC) in Charleston, South Carolina.
Designed for 24/7 operations, the CSOC spans more than 8,500 square feet, consists of nearly 100 workspaces, a small number of offices and a team room. Each workspace has network drops, monitors and phones for unclassified communications, and multiple video teleconferencing (VTC) capabilities are dispersed throughout the facility.
“I am both honored and grateful that we could gather to commemorate this long-awaited dedication made possible by the joint commitment of the Defense Health Agency (DHA) and NIWC Atlantic to the creation of a state-of-the-art facility for our cybersecurity warriors,” said Charles “Cal” Stephens, head of NIWC Atlantic’s Defense Health Information Technology (DHIT) division.
Spearheaded by Stephens in 2017 and funded by DHA and the Program Executive Office, Defense Healthcare Management Systems (PEO, DHMS), the $1.5 million project required a complete renovation of existing outdated lab spaces, including increased power and HVAC requirements, lighting, wall partitions, security system and other upgrades.
A feature wall with video screens will display news and cyber-threat updates around the clock, and can also be used for crisis action coordination and tracking during surge operations. The CSOC also houses a secure facility with conference space, additional workstations and an employee break area.
“This large-scale studs-out renovation required a herculean coordination effort with our facilities staff, space management and cable plant teams, and our construction partner,” said Justin Hodges, lead for DHIT’s Cybersecurity Service Provider (CSSP) team. “Thank you to all who contributed to making this milestone possible.”
The CSOC is home to the CSSP team, which is the U.S. Cyber Command-accredited CSSP for DHA, the Medical Community of Interest (Med-COI) single enterprise network, and Military Health System (MHS) GENESIS.
The CSSP team delivers cyber defense, cyber protection, network security monitoring, network defense, vulnerability analysis, incident response, cyber hunt/threat analysis, and forensic analysis as a DoD-authorized CSSP.
For several years, DHIT has partnered with DHA to deliver numerous IT capabilities to improve the Military Health System (MHS) IT environment. DHIT supported the digital transformation of the military’s medical systems, which has been instrumental in ensuring our warfighters are not only medically ready but can easily deploy those same capabilities across the globe at a moment’s notice.
“Because of DHIT’s work, more than 200,000 medical personnel and millions of service members are empowered to access electronic health records in deployed environments, enabling better treatment for injured and ill service members at every point of care, from injury to recovery,” Hodges said. “Service members can track their medical conditions prior to, during and after deployments, and ensures service members have comprehensive, reliable electronic health records that follow them throughout their military careers and into retirement. Ultimately, and most importantly, DHIT’s work allows medical providers to retrieve patient information at the pace of military operations, which allows our medical professionals to make sound clinical judgements and ultimately save lives.”
Circumstances during the past two years have placed significant demands and challenges on the DHA and the MHS. During this time, DHIT accelerated efforts supporting the nation’s response to the pandemic, providing the defense health community with data; applications; registries; tools; testing support and automated delivery of test results; additional cybersecurity; and system and networking support onboard Navy hospital ships.
Additionally, DHIT expanded telehealth capabilities that enables MHS providers to complete more than 16,000 secure virtual health visits per day. Their work has ensured that medical department functionality and connectivity can be maintained during critical operations while underway.
“With all that our collaboration has accomplished, most do not realize that by significantly increasing the virtualization of all this medical data how that has also increased the attack surface area such that our healthcare organizations and agencies are now more than ever susceptible to cyberattacks,” Hodges said. “Because of this newly renovated cybersecurity operations center, cyber protection and defense services are in place to address hardware, software, or network vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, and to identify and respond to cyber-attacks.”
Kevin Gerald, deputy department head of NIWC Atlantic’s Shore Command and Control, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance and Integration (Shore C2ISR), t remarked how the CSOC and the work performed there “is a tremendous example of the unique capabilities and strategic value of warfare centers.”
“This cybersecurity operations center enables critical mission requirements in protecting the health information and clinical capabilities of service members and their families,” Gerald said. “When we look out at this center, we should all see potential for increased collaboration across our DHA and Naval staff.”
DHA Chief Information Officer Patrick Flanders, who was present for the ceremony, commended the team and said he looked forward to the work that will be done in the CSOC in the future.
“This team epitomizes the superb talent that we have and I am proud to say their contributions improve our ability to effectively deliver high-quality health care to our warfighters, retirees and their families,” Flanders said. “They continuously show initiative and commitment to the development of systems and processes that will lead the MHS toward a better, safer, nationally recognized health care system. I have great faith and confidence that we are well equipped to thrive in the years ahead.”
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As a part of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, NIWC Atlantic provides systems engineering and acquisition to deliver information warfare capabilities to the naval, joint and national warfighter through the acquisition, development, integration, production, test, deployment and sustainment of interoperable command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, cyber and information technology capabilities.
| Date Taken: | 05.19.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 05.19.2022 16:07 |
| Story ID: | 421107 |
| Location: | N.CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 600 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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