Coffee and Conversation with Gil Herrera

On Thursday, September 8^th, Gil Herrera, Director of Research at NSA joined INSA’s Executive Vice President, John Doyon for a virtual conversation on Mr. Herrera’s priorities. Just a year into his role, Mr. Herrera began the conversation by addressing the message he first brought to the agency. First, he prioritized keeping a strong intramural research program. Secondly, he emphasized staying current with advances in an ever-changing technology environment. Third, Herrera stressed the importance of workforce recruitment. The ability to acquire and retain a talented, diverse, and innovative workforce has been a guiding principle for NSA’s Research Directorate.

Mr. Herrera went on to discuss the focus NSA has had on SIGINT and the work that the physics, electrical, computer science, and math departments are doing to improve and modernize those efforts. He stressed that compliance is integral to everything NSA is doing, particularly with AI/ML algorithms and that automation is essential to cyber defense.

Having spent most of his career in industry, Mr. Herrera discussed bringing private industry and national labs greater into the fold, particularly with technology advancements. The Defense Industrial Based (DIB) have been the key underwriters of technology and as technology changes, their innovation will continue to support NSA’s mission in protecting information in the cloud.

Quantum computing played a significant role in the conversation, as Mr. Herrera noted that NSA would soon be releasing future quantum-resistant algorithm requirements for national security systems.  Though it is difficult to predict when quantum computers will be viable, if an adversary were to obtain that capability, it would put US national security systems and financial systems at risk.  Herrera stressed that it is important to adopt these new requirements now.

To conclude, Mr. Herrera outlined the high priority research areas for cybersecurity, with the need to address what he called “left of boom” strategies when it comes to patching zero-day vulnerabilities with hopes that ML will play a significant role.

This conversation provided tremendous insight on the research priorities at NSA and the advancements of technology we will continue to see in protecting information.