US Naval Sea Systems Command, US State Dept Face Cyber Challenges

• The US Navy’s NAVSEA command published the 2nd edition [PDF] of its 2013-18 business plan, whose 1st version was released in October last year. The main addition is the appearance of cybersecurity among mission priorities. NAVSEA accounts for about a quarter of the Navy’s budget, and at almost $30B, it is not very far in size from the entire Departments of Justice or Energy.

• The US State Department is on email lockdown [AP] after it found it was possibly the object of a hacker attack that took place last month at the same time [Defense One] as an infiltration of a White House system.

• Novetta, an analytics firm, released a report [PDF] on a coordinated effort with other security firms to mitigate the threat posed by “Axiom”, a group whose actions align well with China’s strategic interests.

• US Defense Secretary Hagel announced the “Defense Innovation Initiative” that his deputy Bob Work will head, to try and accelerate innovation throughout the department. Maybe start by adopting 21st century information sharing tools and workflows, instead of issuing memos [PDF] as stamped printouts that are then scanned as image PDFs? Bob’s got his Work cut out for him.