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FORT STEWART, Ga. — The 3rd Infantry Division (3rd ID) led the way with cutting-edge technology in cybersecurity during 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team’s (1st ABCT) rotation at the National Training Center (NTC) in Fort Irwin, Cali.
The network operations and security cell is an invisible support structure for setting up and monitoring defensive tools such as firewalls, sensors and scanners. These systems allow a cyber network defense analyst to monitor 3rd ID units for cyber attacks from anywhere worldwide while never leaving Fort Stewart, Georgia.
“I am a part of a team responsible for monitoring alerts that our firewalls and sensors generated,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jacob Karpel, a cyber network defense analyst with the 3rd ID. “We investigate and determine whether or not they are hostile and decide what to do in either case.”
While doing so, they adjust the rules and alerts the network abides by, which secures the computer network from digital threats ranging from innocently failed login attempts to hackers.
What 3rd ID accomplished during 1st ABCT’s NTC rotation has never been done by the U.S. Army at a division or corps level before. The rotation was an opportunity to test the concept of an entirely remote cybersecurity operations center, demonstrating its capabilities and ensuring 24/7 monitoring and support for the duration of the operation, with all cyber personnel hundreds of miles from NTC.
Bridging the gap between remote and in-person work makes constant work for everyone involved unavoidable. Detecting over 17 million digital threats and manually investigating over 3,000 alerts, while also tuning, responding and providing support for 1st ABCT’s NTC rotation, the team simultaneously supported the division’s traditional garrison mission.
“All of this was only possible due to layer upon layer of people acting towards a common goal,” said Karpel. “Service members put in endless hours of effort to enhance our capabilities and predict what we may need to accomplish this mission.”
3rd ID now leads the way, establishing the framework and paving the road for other divisions and higher echelons to follow regarding cybersecurity. Every action they take moving forward is going to have an additional lens of scrutiny added to its decision-making process and every layer of security will be built with the knowledge of what happened during this training event.
“We took a capability that was being underutilized at the brigade level, and brought up the ability to provide a cyber defense to any of our units,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Gregory Hazard, the officer in charge of the Cybersecurity Operations Center. “Although there have been talks at the higher levels about providing more support, there’s nothing formal yet. We are still in the proof of concept stage, proving that this can be done, however, a lot of other divisions are reaching out and they are excited, so who knows where this will go?”
| Date Taken: | 08.26.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 09.04.2024 09:17 |
| Story ID: | 479447 |
| Location: | FORT STEWART, GEORGIA, US |
| Web Views: | 162 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 3rd ID spearheads cyberattack defense, by SPC Rebeca Soria, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
