The US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has unveiled its updated strategy for the next five years.
The new strategy builds upon the 2022 DISA Next Strategy, and will align the IT service provider of the Department of Defense (DoD) with the 2022 National Defense Strategy.
“As a combat support agency and the premier IT service provider for the Department of Defense, we will continue to provide world-class services. At the same time, we are changing. We are re-organizing, optimizing, and transforming to deliver resilient, survivable, and secure capabilities to enable department success and warfighter lethality,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, DISA’s director.
The first priority of the new strategy, covering the period of 2025-2029, will be to simplify the network globally with large-scale adoption of command IT environments. This will involve consolidating combatant commands, defense agencies, and field activities into this environment and avoiding unnecessary duplications across departments.
The strategy adds: “We must capitalize on opportunities to simplify the IT environment, experiment with emerging technologies, and test our solutions in the environments in which the Joint and Coalition Forces operate. We seek to partner with industry and academia to shape IT innovation towards solving our information system challenges.”
According to the DISA Next Strategy document, in 1992 the DoD and DISA had 194 data centers and 122 associated networks. This was then consolidated down to 16. "In 2024, the DoD continues charging DISA to solve enterprise-level, hard, and complex DoD-wide IT and communications problems in a dynamic world."
The second goal of the strategy is for DISA to have, by 2030, a "resilient, globally accessible hybrid cloud environment rooted in DevSecOps principles and supporting emerging 'as code' and 'as a service' capabilities."
Expanding on this goal, the strategy says that DISA must transform its current cloud services into the DoD's hybrid cloud environment. "DISA’s hybrid cloud environment includes actively managed on-premises cloud, data centers, hosting capabilities, and cloud-based tools," the strategy says.
The strategy also notes the importance of keeping its cloud boundary secure with enhanced network monitoring and modern cloud access points.
"This approach to securing our cloud boundary safeguards our information by utilizing the latest cybersecurity technologies and methodologies, denying our information to our adversaries, which helps to defend our warfighters around the globe."
The cloud environment will integrate identity, credential and access management, and zero-trust capabilities.
In April 2024, DISA announced that it had selected HPE GreenLake to develop its Distributed Hybrid Multi-Cloud (DHMC) prototype.
Once HPE has developed the prototype on HPE GreenLake, DISA will be able to manage its IT infrastructure and resources across public and private clouds through one hybrid, multi-cloud platform.
In May 2023, DISA announced that it would launch a private classified cloud in Hawaii, Stratus.
