The Department of Defense unveiled its first new cyber strategy since 2011 on Thursday, which includes training for cyber forces meant to hunt down hackers. Speaking at a public lecture at Stanford University, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter made public a cyberattack by Russian hackers earlier this year on an unclassified DoD network. A cyber defense team noticed the breach within 24 hours, he said, and then tracked down the hackers and kicked them off the network. "I still worry about what we don't know," Carter said, adding that the DoD is also consolidating its IT services into one department and increasing research and development to help bolster the country's cyber defenses.
He also talked about the importance of increasing cooperation between the government, academia and the private sector when it comes to cybersecurity and innovation in general. "We must renew the bonds of trust and rebuild the bridge between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley," Carter said. That will include expanding a fellowship program that allows tech workers to spend one year at a private company and another year working on something similar for the Department of Defense.
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