When the Netscape Navigator was finally launched here on our planet Earth, much of humanity was just on the verge of an era of massive organizational change.
Working in the IT industry and living through the transition of our communications era of data transfer across and through the digital Internet in the early days was full scale innovation. In more ways than one.
As the desktop devices were rapidly designed for digital storage and computing power and the software industry was now at the dawn of incorporating modems of mbps data exchange, data integrity, data security and data resilience; our global intelligence strategies were still naive.
Deficient in worldly wisdom and informed judgment, it would not be too long until DISA, DARPA and others expanded the processes for the protection and the exploitation of the Internet. Network Solutions, Inc. ICANN and so many others.
Ft. Meade, MD to McLean, VA to Arlington to Quantico to Mt. Weather, VA. This was only the beginning of the late night SCIF meetings in the late 90’s.
The next data wake up call was February 18, 2001 in Foxstone Park near Vienna, VA when Robert Hanssen was finally arrested. His Palm 3 PDA was logged into evidence.
So what!
The light speed of fiber-optic submarine cables communicating our “Zeros and Ones,” Quantum, Hypersonic missiles at Mach 5, is just an example.
Back in July of 2000, a few stories above 1555 Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, a three year old startup company was already crawling the Internet 24/7, downloading Terabytes of open source information (OSINT). It was named Cyveillance then.
Many of these early Cyveillance founders can still remember what was discovered then, and what the value of international online monitoring services would soon become. The exponential growth of just the “Dark Web” was astonishing.
It was just causing a feeling of great wonder among leadership early mornings and late evenings across the National Capital Region (NCR).
The speed of defense and intelligence innovation and the pace of critical response in those days was truly epic.
On May 11, 2017 the President issued an Executive Order (EO) on strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure?
The question now is, why did it take us so long? In the mean time, 20+ years had passed.
In April of 2018, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 1.1 was updated. Now 5+ years later, the journey to CSF 2.0 is in draft.
One of our U.S. greatest vulnerabilities still remains in so many places. The speed of change and our future technology innovation.
Our next few decades are so ready for acceleration, in so many places.
With so many more new young minds, working alongside our people with real leadership experience.
With so many new inventions of mankind ready for launch…
Onward!
