Lockheed in cyber defence move

2010-03-03
Newsfeed

The US government's top information provider is working on improving the ways to predict and defend increasingly sophisticated and surreptitious cyber attacks, Reuters has reported.

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The US government's top information provider is working on improving the ways to predict and defend increasingly sophisticated and surreptitious cyber attacks, Reuters has reported.

Lockheed Martin Corporation's second internal intelligence centre is set to be opened in Denver, with the first one operational at Gaithersburg, Maryland, north of Washington, from May 2008.

According to Lockheed officials, cyber attacks are gaining proportions in terms of persistence, stealth, sophistication and targets, which indicate support of nation states or more criminal entities rather than random individuals.

Recently, a video was made at the Gaithersburg centre, which portrayed the cyber security problem as a complex chess match between US government and industry versus several smart attackers from nation states and criminal groups.

Eric Hutchins, a Lockheed cyber intelligence analyst, said the centres were processing a million "incidents" every day, attempting to clear through the "white noise" to identify the highest-risk activities, possible patterns and likely targets.

Market Research Media estimates that the US government will spend $55 billion between 2010 and 2015 in the cyber sector, while Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute expects the government to spend $30 billion over the next five years.

The market was not controlled by any one of the defence companies currently, Thompson said.

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