USAFA HELPS LEAD THE WAY CyberWorx brings cadets, cyber professionals together to battle common enemies By Jeff Holmquist
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hen you step inside room 2N300 in the Fairchild Annex, one would never guess this is the epicenter of a cyberspace project that will eventually send ripple effects throughout the Air Force and the entire nation. Inside this classroom, cadets are allowed — even encouraged — to write on desks and windows. They frequently scribble words and phrases on dozens of Post-It notes and organize them along the walls. Class participants often draw stick figures and diagrams on nearby whiteboards to illustrate an idea. Down the hall, collaboration rooms provide a quiet space for innovators to narrow their focus surrounding the questions at hand. During regular class sessions, which occur every other day, cadets meet here with local industry employees to brainstorm, organize their thoughts and create solutions to cyber security problems that impact businesses, governmental units and the Air Force alike. This is CyberWorx, the new cyber innovation center at the United States Air Force Academy. The center, which was officially launched earlier this year, is in its infancy but expectations are running high for its future impact and success. “CyberWorx is the right name for it,” reports Col. Jeff Collins, the first-ever director of the center. “The verb that we’re doing is working. We are not here to articulate problems. We are here to deliver capability for the Air Force.” Ultimately, the vision of CyberWorx is to create resiliency for Air Force missions and systems, Collins explains. “The metaphor we use now is you can’t build walls high enough any more,” he says. “Our systems have to have resiliency enough to allow us to continue to do the mission despite a cyberattack. We will fight through just like we fight through in the other domains (air and space).”
PLANTING THE SEED A couple years ago, Lt. Col. Mike Chiaramonte ’01 (now CyberWorx director of operations) and Lt. Col. David Caswell (now 690 NSS commander) hatched the idea for the Academy’s new cyber center. “As we were building up the cyber program here at the Air Force Academy, we were looking at ways to make it more relevant to the Air Force,” he says. Chiaramonte, an Academy computer science professor on loan to CyberWorx, was convinced a center dedicated to cyber innovation — utilizing cadets, cyber experts and industry leaders — could reap rapid rewards for everyone involved. 32 · usafa.org
C1C Kellen Hall (left) and C1C Ren Herbert work through the ideation process during a CyberWorx class session. “Ninety-five percent of the problems the Air Force has, industry has as well,” he comments. “We’re all dealing with the same challenges.” The Air Force Academy seemed the perfect location for CyberWorx, Collins claims, because “we have 100-plus PhDs here” and “we’ve got 4,000-plus bright, young, digital-native cadets.” “So, in terms of partnering with industry, we’re able to do that in a way that’s not possible anywhere else in the Air Force,” he says. While attending the 2014 CORONA meeting at the Academy, Chiaramonte approached Gen. John Hyten, then commander of Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, and other senior Air Force leaders about the creation of a possible cyber center. “It took off from there,” he recalls. Today, CyberWorx is operating out of a temporary 2,000-square-foot space. Collins and Chiaramonte are the two active duty officers assigned to the project. The center also is currently supported by seven Air Force Reserve personnel and one civilian contractor. By next spring, the cyber center will move into newly renovated space on the fourth and fifth floor of USAFA’s McDermott Library (where the Center for Character and Leadership Development was previously housed). The 8,000 to 10,000 square feet of space will accommodate the 28 full-time staff members who are expected to be hired as CyberWorx ramps up to full operational capacity.