Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Steven Eaton | Members of the Massachusetts National Guard cyber team and Tewksbury information...... read more read more
TEWKSBURY, Mass. – Over the last two weeks four members of the Massachusetts Army and Air National Guard have been working with the Town of Tewksbury to identify weaknesses in their cyber security and provide feedback on how it could be improved.
The team of four included two Soldiers and two Airmen who conducted the assessments as part of the innovative readiness training program. The IRT is a Department of Defense program that enables military units to use federally funded training time towards approved community projects. Historically, this program has been used to provide physical infrastructure improvements performed by engineer units in towns throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. IRT provides the Soldiers and Airmen of the Massachusetts National Guard the opportunity to practice and train on their military occupational specialty skills in a real-world environment, using their knowledge and skills to help local communities.
Led by Lt. Col. Chris Elgee, a cyber officer with the Massachusetts National Guard Joint Force Headquarters, the team spent two weeks reviewing the town's cyber security plan, probing for weaknesses, and identifying proactive measures the town could take.
“The town is doing great,” said Elgee. “There’s a big opportunity for more to be done. No one is ever at the end of their cyber security journey, there’s always further to go.”
The National Guard team praised the efforts the town has made and addressed paths forward to improve their cyber security. One such path is an additional exercise where the town could test its cyber security and keep improving.
“We recommend at some point in the next year, exercising that cyber security incident response,” said Elgee. “Setting up some kind of tabletop exercise to do two things: to make sure it fits for the town and for your requirements but also to make sure the key players know they have a role in it. If the next big Cyber thing happens in Tewksbury, the directors in different sectors know what their job is.”
This was also a test for the Massachusetts National Guard to see if this program could be run in communities across the Commonwealth.
“We overstaffed this mission to do a proof of concept. [We asked] How can the Mass Guard plugin on state active duty or the IRT program and really help the Commonwealth,” said Lt. Col Timothy Hunt, a Cyber Security Officer with the Massachusetts National Guard.
Bringing the skills of the Mass Guard to the cities and towns of the Commonwealth is a goal of Hunt’s.
“We want to Identify places where we bring unique skills such as Operational Technology assessments for critical infrastructure. That's something we focus on during our Cyber Yankee exercise and a lot of our Soldiers and Airmen have that niche capability,” Hunt continued.
In attendance of a brief of the IRT were members of the Massachusetts Cyber Center, representatives from the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, selectmen from the Town of Tewksbury, and Secretary Jason Snyder, Massachusetts Technology Services and Security, who spoke on the work the Mass Guard and Town of Tewksbury completed over the last two weeks.
“This is wonderful, it's great work,” said Snyder. “There’s so much knowledge gained, and so much planning for the future it really does benefit the Commonwealth tremendously.”
Cyber security is one of the newer fronts of the IRT. By building cooperative partnerships with local communities and non-profits, the program aims to lead and create innovative processes and procedures to address future threats to people and infrastructure.
“In the army and air guard, were’ pretty good at planning, deliberate planning. Maybe we’re able to run [this for] 15 municipalities -- we could get them to a central location, staff it with some Soldiers and Airmen and that could be a whole Commonwealth approach,” said Hunt. “We [could] have our partners from Mass Cyber Center from EOPSS… where we’re affecting 15-20 municipalities at once, bring them in for a few days give them a standard template for an incident response plan help them develop it and the last day maybe we walk through it.”
“We wanted to find a way forward,” said Hunt.
| Date Taken: | 08.10.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 08.16.2023 11:30 |
| Story ID: | 451456 |
| Location: | TEWKSBURY, MASSACHUSETTS, US |
| Web Views: | 103 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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