Cybersecurity

DoD CIO: Make it expensive for hackers to play

As recent events have shown, cyberattacks are extraordinarily expensive for the victims. After a breach and data theft, they are forced to spend millions cleaning up the damage, eradicating threats from their networks, fortifying defenses and managing the fallout.

But for the adversaries committing the breaches, it doesn't cost so much. And that's a big problem for the Defense Department, the government and enterprises writ large.

"Today a threat actor can send a fairly modest amount of money, not just on [attacking] DoD but on any sophisticated enterprise, and cause that enterprise to have to spend quite a bit more money — by orders of magnitude — cleaning up and fixing the problem," DoD CIO Terry Halvorsen told reporters on a call on Sept. 15.