http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/localnews/ci_3578646 By Ben Semmes STAFF WRITER 03/07/2006 CAMP PARKS - Capt. Joe Salazar's may never have guessed that the skills he learned tinkering with computers when he was younger would prove useful in the Army. But Salazar, 34, who works as a systems administrator for Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, and a number of other high-tech workers are utilizing their computer skills in a special unit of the Army Reserve based at Camp Parks in Dublin. A member of the Army Reserve Information Operations Command's western operations center, along with about 60 other soldiers, Salazar, was busy last week fighting off viruses and other mock cyber-threats as part of the unit's second annual drill. Comprised of 300 full- and part-time soldiers nationwide, the unit was created in 2001 to provide defensive tech-support to the U.S. Army to protect vital computer systems from enemy hackers. The soldiers working in the unit have brought their tech skills developed in Silicon Valley to literally the front lines of digital warfare. Although Salazar earned a degree in legal studies from the University of California, Berkeley, he said it was his computer hobby that led to a job at Lockheed and ultimately to his position in the Army Reserve, which he joined in 1991. "(Currently) I'm rebuilding a laptop that was hit by a vulnerability," Salazar said, describing one of his many responsibilities during last week's four-day drill. The exercise was also a nationwide competition between all five Information Operations Commands - located at Camp Parks, Massachusetts, Maryland, Texas and Pennsylvania - to see what team acted most effectively in keeping critical network services up and running. During the exercise, Army personnel located in Maryland acted as hackers, attempting to infiltrate the network and cause havoc across the system. It was Salazar's job to fix the problem once other soldiers identified it. "What scan are we being hit by here?" Salazar yelled to Chief Warrant Officer Tom Millar, another reservist in the unit who works as an information technology specialist at Santa Clara University. "The stuff I can do at work is more restricted than what I can do as a reservist," Salazar said. As a reservist, Salazar must work at least one weekend a month in addition to the required two-weeks a year and he said this is not a problem with his employer. Fred Conley, Salazar's boss and head of the management information systems department at Lockheed, said the company holds the vast majority of its contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and understands the responsibilities of men and women in uniform. "We as a company are supportive of all our (military people)," he said. "We will keep their job open as long as they are actively deployed. As for the more normal use of reservists, as policy we allow them to take three weeks with pay." Salazar's fellow soldiers in the Information Operations Command are employed by Microsoft, Dell, Cisco Systems, Symantec and Mitre among other companies, said unit commander Lt. Col. Darryl Hensley. The soldiers in the Camp Parks unit are clearly a source of pride for Hensley and he said he's hoping for a repeat of last year's performance when they won the first national competition. "The laptop is our rucksack," Hensley said. "I don't want to say that the laptop is our weapon because (our operations are) all defensive." _________________________________ InfoSec News v2.0 - Coming Soon! http://www.infosecnews.org
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