Over the past week, we’ve heard a lot of buzz about the much-anticipated U.S. Cyber Command. This initiative, which is led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, will give the Command the responsibility for the defense of the military’s portion of cyberspace. The new Cyber Command will be managed by the director of the National Security Agency and is expected to be headquartered with the NSA and to reach initial operating capacity in October.

We see this new order in a very similar manner as the rest of the industry. It is recognition that along with the U.S. defending land, sea and air – there must also be a strategy in place to protect cyberspace.

This strategy must also have an offensive and defensive approach. Most organizations today are over-allocating their budget towards prevention in order to keep the bad guys out. But the fact is, according to Verizon Business, 94% of the time, network monitoring and prevention tools will fail to report on an incident and that 9 out of 10 breaches involve unknown data, connections, or systems. Most telling, these are events the tools didn’t know to look for in the first place. This is why we believe implementing an effective incident response solution is so critical to improving the overall security posture of these agencies, or an environment where sensitive data can be accessed.

As the Cyber Command considers its strategy, we hope they consider deploying network surveillance solutions to prepare for the “unknown unknowns.” For the same reasons the bank deploys a camera in conjunction with guards, alarms, and high-tech vaults, having this type of tool on the network closes the gap in today’s information assurance effort. We recognize a bank’s use of cameras as an integral part of their strategy to protect millions of dollars in assets – it’s common sense and universally accepted. For the U.S. Cyber Command, it is even more critical, with much more than dollars at stake.