JIE security components set for January deployment

The cornerstone of the military's top IT initiative, the Joint Information Environment, is expected to be deployed in early January 2015, according to DOD's acting chief information officer.

Terry Halverson said recent testing of JIE's Joint Regional Security Stacks at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, and in Europe has paved the way for deployment of the initial components. The JRSS consist of servers and network switches that limit the number of network access points.

Halverson said the testing showed that "our architecture connection plan appears to be sound." The security stacks will be used to improve DOD network security by the end of 2016, Halverson said.

A full JIE security capability could be ready by the end of 2017, he added.

JIE is one of the largest joint IT efforts the U.S. military has ever attempted. The goal is interoperable cloud-based networks and services that will be able to deliver secure voice, data and intelligence where and when they are needed.

While defense officials spent the better part of last year ensuring that all three services were onboard with the sweeping IT project, successful security testing signals that JIE is moving from the development to the deployment stage.

JIE will include networked operation centers, data hubs and an identity management system with cloud-based apps and services. Along with allowing operations at the edge of the network using any device, JIE is intended to accelerate the “collapsing” of network command and control nodes while reducing DOD’s network management overhead. 

U.S. European Command opened an enterprise operations center in July 2013 as a sort of JIE prototype intended to consolidate dozens of command and control nodes. Pacific and U.S. operations centers were scheduled for roll out this year or early next.