There’s an age-old adage: There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you can get a team to do the work together, and early results from the Cyber Asset Reduction and Security (CARS) Task Force are proof of this concept.
Since inception in October 2006, the CARS Task Force has keenly kept its sights on:
• Improving the Navy’s enterprise security posture;
• Reducing the Navy’s information technology footprint; and
• Enforcing enterprise behavior and preparing the way for the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) and Naval Networking Environment (NNE).
Aggressive efforts, with the fleet; systems commands; personnel and training commands; facilities; higher education commands; and all other major Navy commands, have made significant progress in attaining the Chief of Naval Operations’ goals for CARS to reduce the number of Navy legacy networks.
In the last year, the CNO accelerated the timeline for reduction from September 2011 to September 2010 and raised the bar for total network reduction from 51 percent to 90 percent!
Enhancing the Navy’s Security Posture
According to Neal Miller, CARS director, CARS is focused on improving the Navy’s enterprise security posture. “We are eliminating legacy networks ashore by moving their capabilities into NMCI (Navy Marine Corps Intranet) or ONE-NET,” he said.
“We’re also taking steps to ensure that all networks allowed to remain outside these networks are just as secure and are efficiently managed following common command and control structures.”
Miller added that his team is working to find financial efficiencies and help prepare for NGEN. “This could not be done without the positive support of our mission partners — the NMCI and ONE-NET program leads and the Navy’s Echelon II command chief information officers.”
One of the first orders of business for CARS was to develop written, repeatable processes; including the first-ever Navywide criteria for adjudicating whether a shore-based system or application should be allowed to operate outside the Navy’s designated enterprise networks: NMCI, ONE-NET and Integrated Shipboard Network Systems (IT-21).
The CARS team has followed processes, making adjustments and refinements along the way. Together with mission partners, CARS is operating as smoothly as a well-oiled machine to keep this complex mission on track.
To illustrate the scope of this effort, when CARS was initiated, the Navy had nearly 1,200 networks, including NMCI, ONE-NET and afloat networks, which make up just 12 of the 1,200 total networks. But by the end of September 2008 that total had been reduced to about 500, including approximately 150 “excepted” networks, or networks outside the NMCI enclave, which leaves 350 networks to be terminated by September 2010.
By summer 2008, the systematic CARS case development process identified secure enterprise solutions for common applications for more than 230 systems to be migrated into NMCI and ONE-NET. These cases were far enough along in the planning process so that actual migration timelines were established.
CARS and Echelon II CIO representatives then teamed up to create an aggregate network termination schedule for 200 networks during fiscal year 2009.
The CARS team will press on for network shutdown, which will leave approximately 150 networks to be terminated before the mission completion date of September 2010.
The majority of these cases are in the NMCI area of support, and common solutions are being applied overseas to help transition systems into ONE-NET.
It is important to note that approximately half of the Navy’s total information technology infrastructure is in place to provide capabilities that are either not supportable in, or not appropriate to be provided by an enterprise network.
Examples include Navy