Navy committed to DoD-wide network security plan

By: Mark Pomerleau, 

The Navy is committed to the Defense Department's Joint Regional Security Stacks, a system designed to centralize network security -- albeit on their own terms.

“The challenges really amount to what JRSS is really intended to do versus what the Navy already has in place,” Capt. Michael Abreu, program manager for the Next Generation Enterprise Network, or NGEN said Jan. 25 during a media round table.

The Navy instituted its own endpoint security approach earlier than the other services – which is essentially what JRSS is, as a key pillar of the Joint Information Environment – leading it to make the determination that it won’t uproot what the Navy already has to meet what might amount to lesser standards while the other services catch up.

Right now the path that the Navy is on is really one of collaboration with the Defense Information Systems Agency and the other services to understand the final solution for JRSS, Abreu said, adding the Navy is committed to going behind JRSS 2.0. Right now DISA and others are in test phases of JRSS 1.5.

The move forward hinges on what JRSS would provide versus that the Navy doesn’t already, and moving the Navy and the Navy Marine Core Intranet behind it. The Navy leadership believes this point is JRSS 2.0.

Over the last few years, the Navy has had technical issues with JRSS, mostly around the fact that they have consolidated their network and have a security stack that works for them, Victor Gavin, program executive officer for enterprise information systems, told an audience of mostly defense contractors in Charleston, SC at a December conference. The other service do not possess this, he said noting that in their defense, they clearly had a need for some capability.

“At its current state, the capability is somewhat less than what we have today,” Gavin noted of the current DoD and DISA effort to move to JRSS and shrink endpoints. He mirrored what Abreu said recently, noting that the Navy is on board with the effort as a whole – but when the technical aspect is equal or greater than what the capabilities the Navy has today, which is projected for 2018.

Gavin said the Navy sees the advantages of joint level security, but it’s a matter of when they can have an environment that serves all the customers at the same rate and higher level of security.

As the Navy is readying for the NGEN recompete, Abreu said the JRSS migration won’t have any impact on the recompete as they will simply drop their existing boundary defense systems once JRSS 2.0 comes online. This would be something the NGEN contract winner would do for the Navy as they transition to that environment at the appropriate time, he said, adding it’s not really an impact but a fact of life and something they have to do.