Cyber Dashboard aims to give Army visual insight into metrics
The new prototype will focus on the effectiveness of the Army's cyberspace initiatives.
The Army is in the prototype phase of developing a tool that will give it insight and metrics into the effectiveness of its cyberspace initiatives. Called the Cyber Dashboard, it is being designed to look across people, processes and technologies and provide visual status of individual domains.
“Our view of the Dashboard is as a tool to give visual queing for areas that are working well and for those that are a problem,” said Col. Bruce Pollard, who leads the initiative within the Army Cyberspace Task Force (ACTF).
The Cyber Dashboard takes in as many as 100 metrics about the performance of important initiatives. Then it displays how well those initiatives are doing via red, yellow and green markers. As a result the Cyber Dashboard provides at-a-glance awareness of what areas need improvement.
The project is being implemented in three phases: (1) the gathering of the metrics by working with the data owners; (2) verifying the authoritative data sources; and (3) display of data visually on the Cyber Dashboard for electronic delivery to leadership.
“I’m not as concerned what it looks like visually, as I am about the authoritative data sources,” said Brigadier Gen. Steven Smith, director of the ACTF, who added that the preferred method of placing the metrics into the Cyber Dashboard would be the automatic feeding of information from database to database, as opposed to manual entry or Excel spreadsheet upload.
“This is one of the ways to get cyber defense in front of the eyes of our leaders,” said Smith.