for personally identifiable and other protected information and as legally appropriate, in order to have
a better understanding of the entire threat to government systems and to take maximum advantage
of each organization’s unique capabilities to produce the best overall national cyber defense possible.
This initiative provides the key means necessary to enable and support shared situational awareness
and collaboration across six centers that are responsible for carrying out U.S. cyber activities. This effort
focuses on key aspects necessary to enable practical mission bridging across the elements of U.S.
cyber activities: foundational capabilities and investments such as upgraded infrastructure, increased
bandwidth, and integrated operational capabilities; enhanced collaboration, including common technology, tools, and procedures; and enhanced shared situational awareness through shared analytic and
collaborative technologies.
The National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC) within the Department of Homeland Security will play a
key role in securing U.S. Government networks and systems under this initiative by coordinating and
integrating information from the six centers to provide cross-domain situational awareness, analyzing
and reporting on the state of U.S. networks and systems, and fostering interagency collaboration and
coordination.
Initiative #6. Develop and implement a government-wide cyber counterintelligence (CI) plan. A
government-wide cyber counterintelligence plan is necessary to coordinate activities across all Federal
Agencies to detect, deter, and mitigate the foreign-sponsored cyber intelligence threat to U.S. and
private sector information systems. To accomplish these goals, the plan establishes and expands cyber
CI education and awareness programs and workforce development to integrate CI into all cyber operations and analysis, increase employee awareness of the cyber CI threat, and increase counterintelligence
collaboration across the government. The Cyber CI Plan is aligned with the National Counterintelligence
Strategy of the United States of America (2007) and supports the other programmatic elements of the CNCI.
Initiative #7. Increase the security of our classified networks. Classified networks house the Federal
Government’s most sensitive information and enable crucial war-fighting, diplomatic, counterterrorism,
law enforcement, intelligence, and homeland security operations. Successful penetration or disruption
of these networks could cause exceptionally grave damage to our national security. We need to exercise
due diligence in ensuring the integrity of these networks and the data they contain.
Initiative #8. Expand cyber education. While billions of dollars are being spent on new technologies
to secure the U.S. Government in cyberspace, it is the people with the right knowledge, skills, and
abilities to implement those technologies who will determine success. However there are not enough
cybersecurity experts within the Federal Government or private sector to implement the CNCI, nor is
there an adequately established Federal cybersecurity career field. Existing cybersecurity training and
personnel development programs, while good, are limited in focus and lack unity of effort. In order
to effectively ensure our continued technical advantage and future cybersecurity, we must develop
a technologically-skilled and cyber-savvy workforce and an effective pipeline of future employees. It
will take a national strategy, similar to the effort to upgrade science and mathematics education in the
1950’s, to meet this challenge.
Initiative #9. Define and develop enduring “leap-ahead” technology, strategies, and programs.
One goal of the CNCI is to develop technologies that provide increases in cybersecurity by orders of
magnitude above current systems and which can be deployed within 5 to 10 years. This initiative seeks
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