Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, deputy commander of Cyber Command, has said Cybercom has received authorities in the past six months to defend against threat actors, Fifth Domain reported Tuesday.
“We can no longer have policy that runs all the way to the very senior levels of our organizations before we can take action,†Stewart said Nov. 14 at the CyCon conference in Washington.
“We need the flexibility to act as we see emerging threats and opportunities in this space.â€
Stewart also discussed how the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act clarifies actions the Defense Department should carry out in cyber space and how that bodes well for Cybercom when it comes to making preparations before an operation.
“It recognizes the fact that there [are] certain things you must do in order to prepare for operations and you can’t wait until the operations begin,†he told Fifth Domain.
“That’s freed us up to do some of the things, the operational preparation of the environment, that we were limited from doing outside of the counterterrorism mission and now can do much more broadly against all of our peers and competitors.â€
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