Security Issues with the Global Command and Control System (GCCS)

The Global Command and Control System (GCCS) was one of the most ambitious and largest software integration tasks in the history of the Department of Defense. As the Chief Systems Engineer for GCCS, I found architectural differences among command and control systems presented unique integration and interoperability challenges. In this paper I present 3 security-related examples of specific problems I encountered when I attempted to integrate several systems into GCCS. I also discuss the problem of system-level security analysis and introduce a framework that software engineers can use to evaluate security.