Cyber attacks on US weapons programs and manufacturers are a "pervasive" problem that requires greater attention, the top US arms buyer said on Thursday, saying that he would add cyber-security to the Pentagon's guidelines for buying weapons.
"It's about the security of our weapons systems themselves and everything that touches them. It's a pervasive problem and I think we have to pay a lot more attention to it," Defence Undersecretary Frank Kendall told Reuters after a speech to the American Society of Naval Engineers in Washington.
Kendall said he planned to add cyber security to the next phase of his "better buying power" initiative, and was also working on a special section on cyber-security requirements to be added to the Pentagon's guidelines for buying weapons.
The Defence Department's chief weapons tester told Congress in January that nearly every US weapons programme showed "significant vulnerabilities" to cyber attacks, including misconfigured, unpatched and outdated software.
Increased funding and focus on cyber-security could result in more work for Lockheed Martin Corp, General Dynamics Corp and other firms that already play a big role in cyber-security, encryption and analysis for government agencies.
In January, when Kendall released the latest version of the Pentagon's acquisition guidelines, called Department of Defence Instruction 5000.02, he said he had started work on a new section to deal with designing for and managing cyber-security.
Kendall told the conference that the latest version of his Better Buying Power initiative would be released later this month. It too will include a section on cyber-security, he said.
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