Head of Pentagon’s Cyber Command and the National Security Agency General Keith Alexander has said that though the US military has improved its capabilities against cyberattack, more needs to be done to remedy its vulnerabilities.
Alexander said, "I would give us today probably a ‘C’ going up," when he was asked to grade the Defense Department’s ability to defend its networks during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.
"The reason I say a ‘C’ is we are working extremely hard on building the hardening part of our networks," said Alexander.
"I’d like to say an ‘A’ but I think it’s going to take some time to get to an ‘A’ and an ‘A’ is where I believe nobody can penetrate the network."
However, he added that the Department has made progress in improving the defences against cyber attacks.
Alexander said, "We have made it extremely difficult for adversaries to get in and every day we improve that." He added that there has been "tremendous progress over the last two years."
At the same time, he said that the country needs more people and resources to defend the country from concerted cyber attacks. The US says every day there are over a million attacks on government systems.
"We are finding that we do not have the capacity to do everything we need to accomplish. To put it bluntly, we are very thin, and a crisis would quickly stress our cyber forces," he said.
