Back in August, I spoke with Vago Muradian, host of This Week in Defense News about the challenging cyber security paradox facing The Pentagon: how do you balance between productivity and security?

And the Pentagon gets it.  As Mark Orndorff, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) program executive officer for information assurance and network operations, shared in a Military Information Technology story, “The whole focus is about having global situational awareness so we, (the Department of Defense, DoD), know exactly what’s on the network, the readiness posture of everything on the network, and the network-alerting information to help us fight through an attack.”

This strategy stems from DISA’s 2009 award-winning deployment of a host-based security system (HBSS), the largest IT security deployment within the DoD, which took an important step to monitor, detect, and counter against known cyber-threats to for more than five million DoD host platforms, such as servers, desktops, and laptops.  The underlying technology and integral component of the DISA HBSS solution is McAfee’s Host Intrusion Prevention Systems (HIPS), providing signature and behavioral protection, and a system firewall.

By striking this workable DISA balance, McAfee’s technology was awarded a $9.7 million services agreement today with Northrop Grumman Information Systems for fielding and deployment of HBSS for the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network  (SIPRNet).

With this investment, the U.S. Air Force has enhanced its cyber security infrastructure through its worldwide deployment of HBSS, providing superior, comprehensive threat protection for every system at every level.  They get it.

The U.S. Government gets it. The Administration gets it. The Pentagon gets it. The connections fused by networks and cyberspace have simultaneously made us powerful and weak. It’s a challenging paradox that often accompanies innovation – think e-mail, smartphones, social networks, etc.

The big question: How do you balance productivity with security?

It is this question, as it pertains to the Pentagon’s evaluation of social media, that Vago Muradian, host of This Week in Defense News, and I spoke about last week.

Speaking with Vago Muradian, host of This Week in Defense News

Amidst this time of national adaptation and rapid innovation, one thing is clear – we can’t sit still. The Pentagon has moved rapidly to create policies and implement safeguards which are doing a better job protecting personnel and infrastructure than private industry. They are an interesting case study – especially in the evolving world of social media – and one that industry should learn from. After all, we share a similar goal: use technology to achieve the mission at hand, not hinder it.