The US military is taking a more aggressive stance against foreign government hackers who are targeting the US and is being granted more authority to launch preventative cyber strikes, according to a summary of the Department of Defense’s new Cyber Strategy. The Pentagon is referring to the new stance as “defend forward,” and the strategy will allow the US military “to disrupt or halt malicious cyber activity
at its source, including activity that falls below the level of armed conflict.” The new military strategy, signed by Defense Secretary James Mattis, also emphasizes an intention to “build a more lethal force” of first-strike hackers. The “defend forward” initiative wasn’t included in the 2015 strategy and further enables the United States to carry out offensive hacking operations to defend against cyber attacks on critical US infrastructure, such as election systems and the energy grid. READ MORE
