Army giving corps commanders more cyber terrain powers

The U.S. Army has set out on a pilot effort to bestow authorizing authority for cyber terrain to corps commanders, according to the service’s chief information officer.

Previously, much of this terrain and the capabilities were centrally managed, but that is not how the Army typically fights with physical platforms, where commanders control and own all the risk of their assets. Now, the service is trying to afford commanders the right level of risk to fight their fight.

“For the first time ever in the Army, we actually push those authorizing official authorities down to a corps commander to make sure that they can manage their cyber terrain and fight their cyber terrain versus having some headquarters element who’s disconnected from that fight doing it,” Army CIO Leonel Garciga said during a webinar hosted by Federal News Network Thursday. “It’s a reimagining of how we do that work and really letting commanders have that decision space to make some of those decisions on the cyber terrain that they manage on behalf of the nation … that’s a real operational next level of how we’re going to get those authorities in the right place in the fight.”

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