The biggest transformation in the Department of Defense’s (DOD) cyber enterprise over the next decade may not be a new technology, but the maturation of its cyber workforce, according to the department’s top cyber policy official.
Katherine “Katie” Sutton, assistant secretary for cyber policy and principal cyber advisor to the dsefense secretary, said Sept. 10 that DOD needs to scale its existing cyber talent, deepen specialization, and accelerate how quickly its cyber forces adopt artificial intelligence (AI).
“The biggest transformation we’re going to see that I hope to see in the next 10 years is the maturation of our cyber warriors,” Sutton said during the Billington CyberSecurity Summit in Washington, D.C.
DOD has already begun changing how it develops and retains those personnel. Sutton said the department earlier this summer approved the Cyber Mastery Incentive Pay program, which will help to reward top cyber talent.
“We’re going to be able to provide incentive pay for our uniformed force in the Cyber Mission Force that is going to really reward them for being in the top level,” Sutton said.
“We have tremendous capability in our force, where they spend years honing their craft, building their skill, and at this end, we are now going to be able to reward them when they get to senior and master levels in a pretty significant way,” she explained.
The effort is part of what Sutton described as a “total overhaul of the force generation model” aimed at building greater mastery, specialization, and agility into DOD’s future cyber workforce.
Looking further ahead, Sutton said the department also needs infrastructure capable of developing cyber talent at scale and getting emerging technologies into operators’ hands faster.
She said she is already seeing Cyber Mission Force personnel rapidly experiment with AI.
“To see how quickly they’re adapting AI, how creatively they’re using it, and how fast they’re moving is just phenomenal,” Sutton said.
“I almost can’t imagine where they’re going to be in 10 years,” she added. “Seeing how that’s going to grow is, I think, going to be the biggest transformation of the cyber enterprise in the Department of War.”
Under the Trump administration, the DOD was rebranded as the Department of War.