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distinct threat types are detailed in the Government Cybersecurity Assessment and Risk score sheet
Army considers pausing JRSS migration
The Army seems to have hit a snag in its migration to the Defense Depart- ment’s Joint Regional Security Stacks program. When asked at a recent AFCEA symposium about a rumored “strategic pause,” Maj. Gen. John Morri- son Jr., commanding general of the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence and Fort Gordon in Georgia, said, “There are concerns, as we have added users behind the architecture, about the qual- ity of service.”
Vice Adm. Nancy Norton, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, told reporters at the event that the goal is to lessen or eliminate the operational impact. The challenges with JRSS have come as a result of legacy systems not responding seam- lessly to the new environment across DOD, she added.
“The Army has led the way in terms of the migration behind JRSS,” she said, “so they’re the first ones out there and they’re the first ones seeing some of these applications that actually aren’t working well.”
David Bennett, DISA’s director of operations and CIO, said latency was JRSS’ biggest operational challenge but added that it is typical of any large enterprisewide rollout.
“It’s just really a function of it not performing as quickly as applications need it to, or users are expecting it to be based on what their performance was before moving to JRSS,” Bennett told reporters.
a database can experience increased latency between each one, Griffin said. Neither he nor Norton gave specifics on which applications were affected.
Officials said the latency issues are not a concern in terms of JRSS’ over-
Maj. Gen. John Morrison Jr.
Vice Adm. Nancy Norton
David Bennett
Col. Greg Griffin, the Army’s JRSS portfolio manager, said performance issues could be attributed to users and applications adjusting to the new com- puter environment. “We’re moving them to in many cases a [wide-area network]- based environment, and so they need to take the time to tune those,” he added. “There are certain applications that we have found that are more susceptible to that increase in latency.”
For example, tiered applications with a web interface, an application and
all timeline. Griffin said the hardware will be installed by the end of 2019 as planned, but not all the migrations to the hardware will be completed by then.
In fact, the performance issues could be used as a teachable moment. “The philosophy in the JRSS movement has been very ‘come as you are,’” Norton said. “And what we’ve found in opera- tion is that ‘come as you are’ isn’t work- ing in all cases equally well.”
— Lauren C. Williams
FCW CALENDAR
6/13 IT modernization
Justice CIO Joseph Klimavicz, State Department Senior
Adviser for Innovation Nora Dempsey and GSA Digital Service Team
Lead Joseph Castle are among the speakers at this FCW event on digital transformation strategies. Washington, D.C.
fcw.com/digital
6/19 IT infrastructure
U.S. CIO Suzette Kent will speak at ACT-IAC’s forum on
network modernization and the General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract. Washington, D.C.
is.gd/FCW_EIS
7/11 Defense IT
Defense Department CIO Dana Deasy will give the
keynote address at the Defense Systems Summit, which focuses on technology’s role in tomorrow’s military. Arlington, Va. defensesystems.com/summit
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