Airmen fight different kind of war

  • Published
  • By Deborah Silliman Wolfe
  • Thunderbolt staff writer
LUKE AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. --  An Airman sits at his desk armed with one of the Air Force's most important weapons -- not a 9mm or M-16, but a computer. Though there may not be bullets whistling by the Airman's head, he is at war in cyberspace, and the fight is real.

"Our enemies are out there attacking our network," said Capt. Nelson Avilesfigueroa, 56th Communications Squadron deputy commander. "They are trying to get any information they can and monitor our operations. It is not just happening at Luke, it is happening throughout the Air Force."

In the past few months, Luke Air Force Base has been challenged with many network issues, according to Captain Avilesfigueroa. New directives have been coming down daily from the Joint Task Force - Global Network Operations and Luke has to be in compliance. The majority of the directives are to protect Luke's network, and Luke's network professionals, functional system administrators and client support administrators, have been working long hours to get the job done.

"It is a dynamic environment," Captain Avilesfigueroa said. "We can do everything we can until, say 6 p.m., to protect the network. But I guarantee when we come in at 6 a.m. the next day, we will have 1,000 new threats we didn't know about the day before."

Captain Avilesfigueroa stressed that network security is a team effort and everyone on base needs to be aware of and responsible for how they conduct business on the computer.

"There's no doubt our ops tempo has significantly increased in the network side of the house," Captain Avilesfigueroa said. "But this is not just for the 56th CS -- this is everybody's responsibility. The network is a weapon system, so everyone is included when they are sitting in front of a computer. You have to put that war hat on. Don't just think of the network as providing e-mail, the Internet and storage space. It is more than that. There are people on the other side trying to break in."

To help protect the network, Captain Avilesfigueroa suggests that users limit research on the Internet to official business. He says that when an Airman goes to a .com site, it may look normal to a typical Internet user, but the site may be compromised and someone could be looking through that site, going into the user's systems and implanting a virus.

"A user might click on a photo on the Web, and without them knowing it, they are actually downloading a malicious virus onto the computer," Captain Avilesfigueroa said. "The virus will stay on the computer and it is like a beacon to the other side. The other side will now have an entry point to the computer and can look at the information and monitor network activities."

Valerie Hall, 56th Fighter Wing client support administrator, takes network security threats seriously.

"When General Lorenz (Gen. Stephen Lorenz, Air Education and Training Command commander) says he wants to make our network secure, I believe him," she said. "We cannot be infiltrated by a foreign country through our networks. In this war, we are not going to get hit by bullets -- it is going to be through our networks. There is nothing higher than security -- absolutely nothing. You are only as good as your weakest link."