DIA Chief Information Officer Douglas Cossa
The Defense Intelligence Agency’s Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems Worldwide conference launched on Tuesday with talks by DoD and Intelligence Community leaders on innovation, adaptation and collaboration across the Defense Intelligence Enterprise.
DIA Chief Information Officer Douglas Cossa opened the conference with a discussion centered on streamlining data infrastructure while enhancing cybersecurity: “We're not just talking about things like AI and machine learning and attention on data. We're talking about the communication pipes, the wide area networks, the local area networks to actually get and transfer that data and move it to where it needs to go,” Cossa said.
"And as we look forward into strategic competition and how we need to prepare ourselves, needs to remain a critical component of that, because it is an enabler," Cossa clarified. "And it is, in many cases, the mission of what we do within the IC and the Department of Defense."
Cossa then focused on optimizing the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, the DoD’s and IC’s primary network for classified systems. He said, "it's about adding new cybersecurity, especially zero trust principles to it, but also looking into the future to how to make that network more autonomous, and that's really our focus on JWICS and how we bring that into the more modern era."