Information assurance the West Point way

At the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, we approach the topic of protecting and defending information systems as a matter of national security. The time has long passed where we could consider cyberattacks as merely a nuisance; the threat from a cyberattack is very real. Our national information infrastructure is not just essential to the USA economy; it is a life-critical system. Presidential Decision Directive 63 (which called for a national effort to assure vulnerable and interconnected infrastructure security, such as telecommunications, finance, energy, transportation, and essential government services) officially recognizes this, and numerous reports have validated it. As military academy educators, our duty is to provide an education that empowers our graduates with the skills needed to protect the many critical information systems that the military uses.