The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has selected AttackIQ as the Department of Defense’s (DOD) enterprise platform for Adversarial Exposure Validation, establishing a common operational capability across the department to continuously validate the effectiveness of cyber defenses against real-world adversary behavior.
According to the announcement, the deployment will span all military services, combatant commands, and defense agencies. It will provide DOD leadership with enterprise-wide visibility into cyber readiness while enabling organizations to continuously validate security controls, detections, and defensive processes against adversary techniques most likely to target their missions.
The deployment will be implemented by DISA and supported across the DOD Information Network, creating what the announcement describes as the department’s first enterprise-wide capability for continuously measuring defensive effectiveness through evidence-based adversary emulation.
“By standardizing on AttackIQ as its enterprise Adversarial Exposure Validation platform, the Department of War is establishing a common operational framework for continuously measuring cyber readiness while leveraging AI to automate analysis, prioritize operational risk, and optimize defensive operations at enterprise scale,” said Carl Wright, chief commercial officer of AttackIQ.
As part of the deployment, the department will also use AttackIQ’s AVA Agentic OS, described as an agentic operating system built for cybersecurity missions, along with Watchtower, the company’s Hyper-Localized AI Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyzer.
According to the announcement, the AI-powered capabilities are intended to support the department’s strategy to modernize cyber operations by accelerating the operational use of artificial intelligence (AI) to automate cyber analysis, prioritize mission-relevant threats, and continuously optimize defensive operations.
The deployment is intended to support a range of cybersecurity use cases, including continuous validation of cyber defensive operations, threat intelligence-driven adversary emulation, detection coverage analysis and optimization, security control validation and defense optimization, zero-trust architecture validation, and more.
According to the announcement, the deployment of AVA Agentic OS and Watchtower will automate cyber missions through teams of specialized AI agents.
The capabilities are designed to continuously analyze mission-specific threat intelligence, identify adversary techniques relevant to each defense agency, orchestrate autonomous validation missions, optimize defensive controls, and provide department leadership with a real-time view of the effectiveness and readiness of cyber defensive operations across the global enterprise.