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Former CIA Officer Richards J. Heuer

Today we learned of the passing of Richards J. (Dick) Heuer.

So many of us were influenced by Dick Heuer and his writings. His first public writing on the discipline of intelligence analysis began in 1979 upon his retirement from the CIA. Later he would pull together his many articles to form the basis of his seminal work, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, which helped improve the quality of intelligence analysis and became one of the most superior and lasting texts of intelligence literature.

His writings helped intelligence community analysts realize they have to confront their own human biases and always consider the right mental models when conducting analysis. He also helped many of us realize that the rush to always get more data is not always the right approach to improving analysis. There are times when we have all the data we need but do not apply the right analytical methods or let our bias creep in and cloud our judgement.

In 2010 co-authored the book Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis which highlight 55 structured analytic techniques. This book can help leaders in intelligence, law enforcement and business ensure they are considering the right mental models when approaching an analytical challenge.

With all the challenges facing humanity today, Heuer’s works are more important than ever. Every big challenge out there, including topics like the environment, the economy, the struggle between open societies and closed societies and healthcare, all have data associated with them. Having data does not seem to be the key issue in these domains. Having the right analytical methods and models may be far more important at this point.

 

For more on these topics see the CTOvision Guide to National Security Technology and

More from CTOvision:

Cyberwar and Cybersecurity:

SciFi:

Robots:

Tech Titan Reporting:

 

Technologies To See At DoDIIS

The DoDIIS Conference is almost upon us. August 12-15, 2018, members of the defense intelligence community will gather in Omaha for several days to listen to the latest in mission needs and requirements from key government leaders and to witness demonstrations of cutting edge IT on a very well attended expo floor.

If you have not registered to attend yet do so now here: 2018 DoDIIS Worldwide Conference

One of the challenges we have mentioned before is the overwhelming amount of innovation that will be on the expo floor. We recommend everyone put thought into who to spend time with before the event. We recommend reviewing the full list of exhibitors to get a gist of who is going to be there, then refine your intent on who to spend time with by considering your requirements and how these firms might potentially address them. It is also important to build in time for serendipity of course, but a bit of planning in advance can make this a much more productive conference.

As another input to your planning we reviewed every company with an eye towards potential positive/disruptive innovation in national security missions. idea of where you should spend your time. The list of who you see should be shaped by your own requirements of course, but we have a list below that may help. The list below are the tech firms we want to bring your attention to. In my view they are coming with innovations that could be very positive for the many important missions of defense intelligence.

 

The CTOvision List Of Must See Tech At DoDIIS

  • Alteryx: We like Alteryx for their focus on ease of use for business intelligence use cases, especially around self-service data analytics.
  • Amazon Web Services: We all know them but with their continuous innovation it is important to track the latest. Ask them about Kinesis for data and video.
  • Appian: They enable any company to be a software company. Would love to see more of this in government agencies.
  • Atlassian: Every developer seems to love them, largely because they remove friction in fielding real capabilities. Great collaboration for techies.
  • Attivo Networks: Advanced deception technology.
  • Anomali: Threat intelligence identifying threats to networks.
  • Basis Technology: Continues to innovate around language.
  • Blue Prism: Pioneers in robotic process automation and digititizing
  • Bricata: Innovative next generation intrusion prevention, detection, response
  • Carahsoft: Removing friction for government decision-makers. See at DoDIIS for access to 100’s of great technologies
  • Cloudera: The absolute leader in fielding enterprise data solutions that scale and operate at speed. Modern platform for machine learning and analytics optimized for the cloud.
  • Data Robot: Automating tasks for data scientists. Great capability.
  • Fidelis Cybersecurity: Providing a new platform to detect, investigate and stop advanced cyber attacks.
  • Palantir: Transforming the way organizations use data.
  • Percipient.ai: Artificial Intelligence for national security missions.
  • PFP Cybersecurity: If you want to make it hard on nation states trying to hack you, use these guys.
  • Recorded Future: Fast insights into cyber threats put in context of your enterprise needs.
  • VMware: Accelerating digital transformation for the enterprise.

By the way, we track these and many other hot technology firms in the CTOvision Disruptive Technology Finder . Use that to kickstart your market research.

Also see:

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age

David Sanger has established himself as on of the top cyber journalists in the nation. His latest work, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age, provides a critically important update on the rapid progress of cyber war and belongs on the bookshelf of every cyber defender.

Readers of CTOvision know the day to day back and forth of cyber war. But it really helps when a researcher like David Sanger can give us insights from his perspective. This book is great context.

From the book description:

The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes—from crippling infrastructure to sowing discord and doubt—cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. Two presidents—Bush and Obama—drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal and, during President Trump’s first year, turned back on the US and its allies. The government was often paralyzed, unable to threaten the use of cyberweapons because America was so vulnerable to crippling attacks on its own networks of banks, utilities, and government agencies.

Moving from the White House Situation Room to the dens of Chinese government hackers to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger—who broke the story of Olympic Games in his previous book—reveals a world coming face-to-face with the perils of technological revolution. The Perfect Weapon is the dramatic story of how great and small powers alike slipped into a new era of constant sabotage, misinformation, and fear, in which everyone is a target.

For more see The Perfect Weapon  Kindle   Hardcover  Paperback

For more on these topics see the CTOvision Guide to National Security Technology and

Additional Reading:

The Air Traffic Control System: We all assumed it was vulnerable, but now we know

If You Drive A Car, Or Know Someone Who Does, You Must Read This…

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Fred Kaplan Explores The Secret History of Cyber War

What You Need To Know About The Administration’s Cybersecurity National Action Plan

Like Kip in Napoleon Dynamite, We love Technology

Breakthrough In Energy We Should All Track: New green technology generates electricity ‘out of thin air’

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

The Security Yearbook by Richard Stiennon

I Thought I Had Seen Some Crazy Things In The Intelligence Community, But Nothing Like Nuking The Moon

SitScape and AECOM announce five-year strategic partnership

As an advisor to SitScape I’ve been in a position to watch the capabilities of that firm evolve over time, from their beginnings as an incredibly functional and fast integrator of visualizations to what is now an incredible provider of enterprise grade collaborative user-defined digital enterprise enablement platform (DEEP)  It has been great watching them grow in the market as well, and this has all contributed to their reputation for delivery.

The press release below is another endorsement of their capability. It is an announcement of a five-year strategic partnership with AECOM, the premier integrated global infrastructure firm known for designing, building and serving some of the largest infrastructure projects in the globe.

For more see: SitScape.com

SitScape and AECOM announce five-year strategic partnership

The agreement will bring innovative digital enterprise enablement technology to AECOM’s Management Services group

VIENNA, V.A. (April 10, 2018) — SitScape, Inc., the innovator in Collaborative User-Defined-Operating-Picture (UDOP) and Digital Enterprise Enablement Platform (DEEP) software, and AECOM, a premier, fully integrated global infrastructure firm, today announced they have signed a five-year strategic partnership agreement.

This strategic partnership will include the rollout of SitScape’s software in AECOM’s Management Services group. It not only benefits AECOM’s internal operations, it also optimizes the mission-critical operations of AECOM’s global customers by applying SitScape’s award-winning, no-coding DEEP software with integrated data analytics, machine learning, visualization, process automation and collaboration capabilities.

“It has always been a pleasure working with AECOM teams in various projects. We are excited to establish a more formal and long-term relationship with AECOM,” said Kevin Yin, SitScape’s chief executive officer. “AECOM’s decision to license SitScape’s software technology to support its internal operations, as well as to bring it to its global customer base will significantly accelerate the joint transformative value delivery by both parties.”

“AECOM has been teaming with SitScape since 2016 and their advanced software has generated highly visible value and cost savings on our large contracts,” said Jill Bruning, AECOM’s executive vice president and general manager, Intelligence, Systems Engineering, Security, Services and Solutions (IS4) of its Management Services group. “With this five-year strategic agreement, we are officially formalizing our relationship and ready to implement this proven innovation across our global business to solve complex data challenges for our clients.”

SitScape’s software empowers senior leaders, mission users, operators and analysts at enterprise or program, project levels to gain greater utility and integration over their current vast disparate information sources and siloed applications. By simply using a web browser, and with no coding needed, they can contextually visualize, analyze, communicate, share and collaborate in real time across globally distributed users and organizations with optimized human machine teaming. Clients benefit from the underlying machine learning, and automated data or process flows enabled by SitScape’s patented technology. This can be done via a personal computer or mobile device for rapid shared situational understanding, actionable operational intelligence and discrete performance optimization.

About SITSCAPE
SitScape Inc., the recognized leader of Digital Enterprise Enablement Platform (DEEP) software solutions for Intelligent Digital Operations, is trusted by various Fortune 500 organizations and the federal government for their digital transformation, real-time collaboration, knowledge sharing, agile data correlation, continuous monitoring, machine learning, analytical visualization and flexible Straight-Through-Processing (STP) data flow and process automation.
Our self-service, easy-to-use User Defined Operating Pictures (UDOP) graphical user interface, combined with the underlying STP engine, can support critical decision making at real-time with actionable digital intelligence, smart human-machine teaming, dynamic collaboration and automated data and processing flows at the enterprise scale.
To learn more about SitScape and its software, please visit www.sitscape.com.

About AECOM
AECOM is built to deliver a better world. We design, build, finance and operate infrastructure assets for governments, businesses and organizations in more than 150 countries. As a fully integrated firm, we connect knowledge and experience across our global network of experts to help clients solve their most complex challenges. From high-performance buildings and infrastructure, to resilient communities and environments, to stable and secure nations, our work is transformative, differentiated and vital. A Fortune 500 firm, AECOM had revenue of approximately $18.2 billion during fiscal year 2017. See how we deliver what others can only imagine at aecom.com and @AECOM.

 

Also see:

In Defense Of 3% Of Google’s Employees And Their (And Everyone’s) Right To Have Opinions

On 4 April the New York Times and then many others reported that thousands of Google employees signed an open letter asking Google to stop working on an Artificial Intelligence project with the US military. The letter, addressed to Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai, sought to cancel any involvement anyone from Google might have with the DoD’s “Project Maven” (read the full text here). It said, in part, that “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war.” It went on to state that “Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”

This story and the letter was widely read among the national security and technology community and by those interested citizens who track technology and are concerned with issues of war and peace. No matter what your opinion on this topic, I hope you see this as a good, having more people think through issues of war and peace should be healthy for our future. Every American should be involved in national security, not just those in the DoD or the Intelligence Community, we need more views not less.

I did not see one comment from anyone in the national security community that indicated they were surprised by the fact that some employees of a Silicon Valley corporation would do something like this. But many were disappointed that such a high number would have these views.

The views of the drafter and signers of the letter are clear. But they might be surprised to know there are other views. For many who are tracking the activities of Project Maven or other DoD AI related efforts, this is just a smart use of technology to find ways to save more lives. This includes lives of our military forces, but also the lives of innocents put in harm’s way by totalitarians or terrorists. In most cases, these innocents cannot really influence the totalitarians or terrorists that put them in danger in the first place. Why would those who signed the letter not want to use AI to reduce the danger that innocents are in?

Of course those that signed the letter are lovers of peace. So are those at Project Maven. That may be the hard thing for the 3% at Google to understand. Project Maven is good. I have no idea what, if anything, anyone at Google is doing for Project Maven. But if they are supporting it then they are doing good by saving lives.

Others in the national security community questioned the awareness this 3% of Google’s workforce might have for how their technologies are being used around the world right now. Maybe it is a sort of myopia, they seem to not realize that Google is in the business of war right now, and that every dictator, totalitarian state, kleptocracy, criminal group and terrorist feel at liberty to leverage Google’s many services to their ends at the expense of innocents and our national security. With their dominate place in providing information, Google and other tech giants are also in the business of cyber war, whether they like it or not. Others commented to me that it is very hypocritical for the company to attack the very organization that defends their ability to operate free without fear of hostile foreign power attack.

I also saw many good arguments in the support of the 3% at Google. Many of us, myself included, would like to ensure humanity has better control over the technology we are all creating. It is important that we all think through the rise of AI.

I have to say, although my views are different than the 3% of those at Google, I most strongly appreciate them making the argument and endorse totally that they, and their company, have the right to articulate and publish any opinions they have. This whole episode should remind us all that the beauty of a free country is our ability to express our thoughts and opinions. My hope is that the people who signed the letter are open to other opinions and would reconsider their positions, but I also most strongly encourage everyone I know in the nation security community to read the views of the 3% of Google employees. Their articulation of views like this is an exercise in freedom of speech we should all endorse.

Some other ideas:

  • It could be that DoD should engage more with the press and Silicon Valley and the AI research/development community and our citizens on the nature of technology for defense. The more people are informed the better their opinions will be on this.
  • It might be that Google’s employees, including those that signed the letter, could consider how reducing error in war and improving targeting of weapons can save lives and reduce the danger that innocents are put in.
  • Government policy-makers, including the Congress should also think through the nature of AI support to war. There is already a Congressional AI Caucus. Maybe this is a good topic for them to dive into.
  • It could also be that all of us should think through the nature of corporate technology support to totalitarian dictatorships and terror groups and criminal elements. There may be more that can be done to mitigate the impacts of bad people from using  technology. I know this may sound a bit altruistic or even utopian of me, I know it will be hard to keep bad guys from using advanced tech. But would advocate we think through ways to keep them from having advantage because of it. And would love Silicon Valley to help with that discussion.
  • Google, Facebook and other tech giants have been used by totalitarians as a tool in cyber war. Their ability to target ads to specific groups or even individuals makes them a very tempting channel for bad guys to use. This is another area where tech giants should help humanity out.  But I’m not sure if it is in their best interest to do so. Maybe this is an area where regulation and more oversight is required.

More CTOvision Reporting:

DataTribe Launches Inaugural Cyber Funding Competition: The DataTribe Cyber Crucible (putting up $Millions in funding)

One of the most virtuous activities in the American economy is the smart deployment of investment money on disruptive technologies. When done right, this can be a win for so many stakeholders, including businesses, governments and the general public. The team at DataTribe has already been taking virtuous, company building action that is creating value for multiple stakeholders, and is now establishing a new competition to identify high technology startups who could benefit from startup funding.

We encourage all to view the press release DataTribe released and broadly share it, this is a tremendous opportunity for innovators with an already developed concept to bring attention to their work and potentially gain the attention needed to transform their product and vision into a viable company.

For more see the DataTribe press release below:

Startup Studio DataTribe Launches Inaugural Cyber Funding Competition – the DataTribe Cyber Crucible

PR Newswire 

Winners Will Be Eligible For Up To $2 Million in Seed Financing, Potentially Millions More in Series A Venture Capital

Three Finalists Will Also Share $20,000 in Prize Money

FULTON, Md., Feb. 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — DataTribe, a cybersecurity startup studio, announced today that it is launching the DataTribe Cyber Crucible, a competition to identify high-technology startups with a vision to disrupt cybersecurity and data science.

The three finalists will split $20,000 in prize money, and one may receive up to $2 millionin seed capital from DataTribe. This could be followed by up to $6.5 million in Series A venture funding from DataTribe and AllegisCyber, a Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity venture capital firm. Startups with less than $1.2 million in seed financing are eligible to apply.

DataTribe’s Next Big Investment Opportunity

“This is an excellent opportunity for early-stage, elite cybersecurity and data science startups to develop further traction and move into the mainstream of the venture capital funding process,” said Mike Janke, a DataTribe co-founder. “This experience will provide them with a roadmap for the initial stages of launching a cyber startup with a commercial product.”

“For DataTribe itself, this is an opportunity to identify our next big thing,” added Bob Ackerman, Founder and Managing Director of AllegisCyber Venture Firm and co-founder of DataTribe.

DataTribe has already built a unique reputation as a partner with elite engineering teams at the cutting edge of innovation, typically leveraging their experience at national security agencies or government labs. DataTribe’s mission is to advance the state of the art in cybersecurity and data science.

Competition Guidelines

All contestants must have already developed a robust concept or initiated development of a minimal viable product (MVP) – i.e., a product developed with sufficient features to entice early adopters.

Preference will be given to early-stage startups based in a Five Eyes nation (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) and with experience working in national security, defense, national laboratories, or at cybersecurity and data science R&D organizations. Contestants with appropriate commercial experience will also be given extra consideration, but commercial experience is not required.

Contestants have until March 23 to apply at www.datatribe.com/go/cybercrucible/. DataTribe will review submissions for technical merit, market potential, and readiness of the team. On April 2, DataTribe will announce up to three finalists. These teams will then have three weeks to refine their pitch and prepare for final judging, with assistance from the DataTribe’s team of startup veterans. Finalists will present a pitch and answer questions from judges on April 25 at DataTribe Headquarters in Fulton, MD.

The judging panel includes Mike Aiello, Google’s Product Manager for Privacy and Data Protection; Tony Cole, global Government CTO at FireEye; John N Stewart, Chief Security and Trust Officer at CISCO; Daniel Weinand, co-founder of Shopify, the large publicly-traded provider of ecommerce solutions; Mike Janke, co-founder of DataTribe and six-time company founder; Bob Ackerman, founder and managing director of AllegisCyber; and Steven Witt, co-founder of DataTribe and past CEO of Onyara.

Finalists will share a prize pool of $20,000, and will be considered by DataTribe for up to $2 million in seed funding, and approximately another $1 million in in-kind support services.

Several DataTribe-backed companies have gathered media headlines recently, such as Dragos, the industrial cyber security company, which made headlines over CRASHOVERRIDE and TRISIS. Other DataTribe portfolio companies, include: Enveil; which was the runner-up at last year’s RSA Innovation Sandbox competition and, ReFirm Labs; recently featured on Fox News, Washington Post and Fortune for Firmware vulnerability disclosures.

About DataTribe

DataTribe was launched in 2015 with the vision of empowering technologists in the Washington, D.C. region to build and grow successful cybersecurity companies. Founded by leading investors, startup veterans and alumni of the U.S. intelligence community, DataTribe commits capital, in-kind business services and decades of professional expertise to co-build the next generation of cybersecurity, big data and analytics companies. DataTribe is headquartered in Fulton, MD, with offices in San Francisco, CA.For more information, visit https://datatribe.com.

WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us

Tim O’Reilly’s latest book is out! Everything he writes is worth reading. He has always brought insights into technology, business and society, and this time he is no different. WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us is a fantastic guide and overview of the tech and business megatrends sweeping over society.

Topics covered include artificial intelligence, cloud computing, on-demand services, the Internet-of-Things, autonomous vehicles and so many other related technology enabled constructs. He also makes clear arguments that income inequality, declining upward mobility and job loss due to technology are all topics that society must now address.

This book gets our strongest possible endorsement for anyone who wants to play a role in shaping the future of our tech enabled world (and that should be all of us). For more and to order see: WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us

Additional Reading:

The Air Traffic Control System: We all assumed it was vulnerable, but now we know

WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Fred Kaplan Explores The Secret History of Cyber War

What You Need To Know About The Administration’s Cybersecurity National Action Plan

Like Kip in Napoleon Dynamite, We love Technology

Breakthrough In Energy We Should All Track: New green technology generates electricity ‘out of thin air’

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

The Security Yearbook by Richard Stiennon

I Thought I Had Seen Some Crazy Things In The Intelligence Community, But Nothing Like Nuking The Moon

Transition for One of The Nation’s Greatest Enterprise CTOs: Dave Mihelcic Retires From DISA

Editor’s note: Dave Mihelcic has been a leader, mentor and friend to thousands, including me.  I wish him the very best in his transition from government service.  It was great to see how DISA honored him with with a farewell release on their site. Find and follow Dave on LinkedIn here. -bg

The following is from: DISA CTO Retirement 
Chief technology officer to retire after 31 years of government service

The man who ensured the services and capabilities the Defense Information Systems Agency develops are technically in sync with the director’s strategic vision will retire after 31 years of government service in a ceremony at the agency’s Headquarters Feb. 21.

David Mihelcic, DISA’s chief technology officer (CTO), served 19 years at the agency and his legacy endures through the programs the Office of the CTO was responsible for.

Mihelcic’s team developed the Global Information Grid (GIG) Convergence Master Plan, which lays the foundation for transforming the DOD network and business and command and control applications into a converged, modern set of services riding on a single Internet Protocol (IP) network. He was responsible for planning and fielding the DOD’s first two-way Global Broadcast System, providing service at 21 sites in Southwest Asia in support of post-9/11 contingency operations. He also orchestrated an unprecedented agreement between the Chief Information Officers of the DOD and the intelligence community, which identified an area of sharing that avoided $12 million in redundancy and served as a precedent for future opportunities.

Prior to his appointment as CTO, Mihelcic served as the deputy program director for the Global Information Grid Bandwidth Expansion (GIG-BE), chief executive engineer (CEE) for the Defense Information System Network (DISN), commander of the Center for Horizontal Integration, and deputy CEE for Information Processing at DISA. He also worked at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) for 14 years, and had a brief stint as a senior consultant in private industry.

His decision to pursue government service at the NRL and DISA, as well as his plans for the future, are heavily influenced by his willingness to support the military services and, specifically, the warfighter.

After graduating from the University of Illinois with a degree in electrical engineering, he sought to work for the Department of Defense. He eventually chose an engineer position with NRL after looking at jobs within the various military services, and with industry positions in support of the military services.

“I started as a GS-7. I left as a GS-15,” said Mihelcic. “I started as an engineer working in communication security, basically working with National Security Agency encryption products, and eventually ended up being one of the founders of what would become the Navy’s information assurance program.”

Mihelcic remarked that his proudest accomplishment in government service was before his appointment as the DISA CTO.

While serving as the deputy program director and CEE for the GIG-BE program, his team virtually eliminated the bandwidth constraints in the DOD’s terrestrial network.

“We had an $877 million investment. We acquired commercial fiber optic cable. We lit that cable with the most leading-edge technologies available. We made it available to warfighters as high-speed IP, with NIPRNet and SIPRNet services available,” said Mihelcic. “Really, that’s completely changed how the Department does business, and quite frankly, it has changed DISA as well.”

In addition to the technological advancements the DOD and the military services would reap from GIG-BE, there were other benefits DOD and DISA would gain from the program.

“Not only did we get this huge infusion of technology, but we got the infusion of skills and people,” said Mihelcic. “There were contractors that worked for us when we conducted the GIG-BE program that subsequently came to work with us as government employees … and I feel that today, the reason that we are so successful in the long-haul communications business is because of that great work we did in the GIG-BE program and the great people we attracted to DISA.”

Following his service with NRL and industry, his tenure at DISA almost didn’t happen. After applying, and subsequently being offered the job, he initially declined the job offer.

“The chief of staff at DISA, Army COL Frank Whitehead, called me to say, ‘I can’t offer you more money, but I can guarantee that you are going to help the warfighter,'” said Mihelcic. “I thought about that, and I thought about the importance of the DISA mission, so I took the job and I’ve been here ever since.”

Mihelcic said the DISA CTO is responsible for oversight of all technology at the agency through the Chief Engineers Panel, which brings together the senior technical representatives of all of DISA’s projects and programs. He stated that in addition to this oversight, his team ensures DISA has a pipeline of relevant concepts and technologies to inform and guide the agency’s activities moving forward.

“We ensure that what DISA does is technically in sync with the Director’s strategic vision, has good systems engineering, and is scalable, secure, and survivable,” said Mihelcic.

The CTO went onto say he is going to miss the people and the mission.

“The CTO has some of the best and brightest in all of DISA, and they have a very difficult job because instead of working on one of the core programs, whether it be the DISN, or computing, or Global Command and Control, they really have to work in support of everything DISA does – the entire mission.”

He said CTO has to interact with the Chief Strategy Office, work with all of the left- and right-side functions, as well as to work with industry, academia, and other government organizations.

“I think the people we have in the CTO, because they have this broad experience in everything that DISA does, they are really the right people for that job,” said Mihelcic.

In addition to missing the people at DISA, he reiterated the reason he came back to government service after his brief time as a consultant was primarily due to the DISA mission and the opportunity to support the warfighter.

“The one thing that COL Whitehead told me that I could get at DISA that I couldn’t get anywhere else was that ability to influence the mission and really help the warfighter,” said Mihelcic. “I am really going to miss that, because I think DISA has done great things for the Department of Defense and the warfighter. I think we’re going continue to do great things, and I really hope in my next job I can find at least some semblance of that. A place where I can actually influence the future.”

After reminiscing about his 31 years of service, Mihelcic ended with these words.

“We have great people. We have a great mission. And as long as DISA leadership empowers and trusts our people to do the right thing, we will accomplish whatever goal is set forth.”

Posted February 17, 2017

Related Reading

Like Kip in Napoleon Dynamite, We love Technology

How Far? The Line Between Compassionate Care and Ruthless Efficiency

Bryson Bort of Scythe Discusses IoT Vulnerabilities and Threat Trends To Date

Maximize The Value Of Your 2018 RSA Show Visit

Miracle on Ice: Business, Technology and National Security Leadership Lessons from the 1980 Olympics USA Hockey Team

Happy New Year: Here Are Five Suggestions To Reduce Your Digital Risk

The First Quantum Revolution: Foundational information for the enterprise CTO

 

 

 

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