Vice Chief of Naval Operations Visits FCC/C10F

From U.S. Fleet Cyber Command/U.S. 10th Fleet Public Affairs

FORT MEADE, Md. (NNS) -- The Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO), Adm. Michelle Howard, visited U.S. Fleet Cyber Command/U.S. 10th Fleet (FCC/C10F) headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, Sept. 26.

Howard received an update on FCC/C10F operations and plans, met with Sailors and civilian staff, and participated in a round table discussion with Vice Adm. Jan E. Tighe, the commander of FCC/C10F, and her leadership team.

"We have operated and excelled in three dimensions of warfighting [sea, air, land] over the past 100 years, after thousands of years focused only on sea and land," Howard said, "and now we must master a fourth dimension: the cyberspace domain."

She noted the imperative to continue to better educate the Navy team about the operational impact of cyber in order to transform the culture and provided the historical example of Fleet Admiral William Frederick Halsey, Jr. to illustrate the point.

Halsey was born in the 1882 and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1904 (which, for example, was before zippers, toasters, or color photography existed). After the First World War, in the 1920s, he saw the vital importance of air power (an emerging domain at the time, similar to cyber today) when others doubted it. That vision led him to attend flight school in 1935 at the age of 52, helping him successfully lead the aircraft carrier fight during World War II.

Howard went on to emphasize the need for today's senior and junior Navy team members, both uniformed and civilian, to similarly embrace cyber.

"We must make the understanding of cyber's impact on the maritime operational level of war as fundamental as damage control or flight operations in our Navy," Howard said.

Tighe further highlighted this in describing threats to Navy networks in terms of attack surface and how that surface expands based on poor user behavior, for example, which in turn increases opportunities for adversaries to exploit.

"The attack surface grows larger when network users, unaware of the ramifications of their on-line behavior, unwittingly succumb to spear phishing emails that link and download malicious software, or use peer-to-peer file sharing software that introduces malware to our networks, or simply plug their personal electronic device into a computer to recharge it," Tighe said.

She also discussed the Navy's layered, defense in depth approach to protecting those Navy networks, the Navy's portion of the Cyber Mission Force build for U.S. Cyber Command, and the need for some in industry and academia to understand the importance of protecting unclassified, but sensitive Navy data on their networks.

"One of our toughest challenges is in ensuring the protection of sensitive but unclassified data that is Navy related and resides outside Navy/Department of Defense networks in the defense industry base and academia. It is largely outside of our control, but poses a great threat to maintaining our war fighting advantage," Tighe said.

Tighe noted that the Navy and DoD are moving toward greater cooperation and sharing and across government, industry, and academia, but this needs to go further and faster.

"We need the information in business and academic networks to be as protected as the information in the DoD networks" Tighe said.

Both leaders agreed now is the time to implement additional, comprehensive cyber education for all hands and based on work roles (i.e., a tiered approach with training respectively tailored for all network users, for leaders, and for cyber experts).

Updated cyber training for all hands is expected to begin by the end of FY15.

The visit was also a remarkable moment for gender integration, with the two leaders having each made history in 2014.

On July 1 of this year, Howard made U.S. Navy history as first female ever promoted to the rank of four-star admiral.

Earlier, on April 2, Tighe became the first female commander of a numbered fleet in U.S. Navy history when she took the helm of FCC/C10F.

U.S. Fleet Cyber Command (FCC) reports directly to the Chief of Naval Operations as an Echelon II command and is responsible for Navy Networks, Cryptology, Signals Intelligence, Information Operations, Electronic Warfare, Cyber, and Space. As such, FCC serves as the Navy Component Command to U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Cyber Command, and the Navy's Service Cryptologic Component Commander under the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, exercising operational control of Fleet Cyber Command mission forces through U.S. 10th Fleet (C10F).

C10F is the operational arm of FCC and executes its mission through a task force structure similar to other warfare commanders.