For decades, the National Security Agency went by the unofficial nickname “No Such Agency” as it gobbled up international communications and surveillance data and provided super-secret intelligence to policymakers.
The agency avoided headlines and publicity in all but the rarest circumstances, but it’s taking a different approach with its Cybersecurity Directorate, which it launched last week to unify its foreign intelligence and cyber defense missions in one still-very-secret and state-of-the-art facility on its Fort Meade, Maryland campus.
“For us to be most effective, we have to be out there. If we’re going to be effective, we need to be more open,” Neal Ziring, the NSA’s technical director, told reporters Thursday at its new Integrated Cyber Center.
The ICC is a $520 million, 380,000 square foot facility that houses up to 1,400 personnel from NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, the defense contracting community and other defense and intelligence agencies. The epicenter of the facility, which opened last year, is a command center that would make any James Bond supervillain blush.
Three massive video monitors—the largest of which is 57 feet wide and 20 feet tall—loom overhead of a warehouse-sized floor where teams of cyber gurus and data scientists hover over souped-up computers with screens displaying all variants of code. The command center is staffed 24/7, and teams cycle in every 12 hours to monitor real-time internet activity and cyber threats as they unfold over the world. Its connectivity with global intelligence partners ensures immediate communication over global cyber crises.
Reporter visits to NSA facilities are rare, and Thursday’s bussing in of more than a dozen reporters to show off its ICC was a first-of-its-kind effort, evidencing what cybersecurity directorate Chief Anne Neuberger acknowledge ..
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