The Air Force Vulnerability Management Team assesses vulnerabilities against cyber attack for installation IT systems and networks, and identifies areas of improvement to withstand, mitigate and deter cyber attacks.
The team used an innovative IT integration strategy where they acted as their own system integrator, and delivered full scanning capability while saving the Air Force $22 million in less than a year. That solution has since been deployed to 211 sites to detect threats 24/7 in real time.
See full coverage of the Elite 6 Awards.
The Air Force Vulnerability Management Team deployed the first-ever AFNet Linux patch management system, which assures configuration control and reduced sustainment costs by $1.5 million a year.
Accepting the award on behalf of the Air Force Vulnerability Management Team were Capt Weldon Hobbs from the team and Michael Kaplan, chief of the Air Force Network Systems Branch.
"The message was very clear; we needed to find ways of delivering cyber capability to our war fighters in a much quicker fashion," said Kaplan. "Not long thereafter, DISA mandated that the latest version of its vulnerability management system be deployed across the services. And Capt. Hobbs is the program manager for that. He came to me and said, 'we have a different way of doing things. Instead of hiring a system integrator, we're going to do this organically using the people just in our program office.' We approved the strategy, formed a very small team and deployed this capability to over 200 bases worldwide. The Air Force, active duty and guard, did it on SIPR/NIPR, saved about $22 million in the process, and did it in about a year less time than it would have taken normally."
