HUNTSVILLE, Al —Cyber Security should be viewed from a holistic standpoint, with more emphasis placed on internal cyber security and the importance of networked instead of hierarchical systems, a retired Air Force General said in Huntsville yesterday.

Addressing the 2nd Annual Defense Associations' luncheon Thursday at the Von Braun Center, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Robert Elder stressed the importance of treating cyber space as "more than just the security aspect."

"The challenge is to change the culture of how we solve engineering challenges. We are looking at new opportunities to manage strategic objectives," he said.

The cyber world, he said, operates on the concept of networked systems, not the hierarchical model of organizational structure common to the military, industry, and other major organizations.

"It's not a top down or hub and spoke arrangement," he said. "Any node in the network can be a new leader. The one who is best qualified at the time can be the new leader." Understanding this, he said, is critical to the enhancement of security in an information technology system.

"In a network, if you stop contributing, your value goes to zero," he said.

Networking can literally change history, Elder said. The success of last year's "Arab spring" uprisings, which toppled governments in several Middle Eastern states including Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, resulted largely from the connections of hundreds of thousands to social media.

Introduced as a "leader in cyber security," Gen. Elder last served as the 47th Commander of the 8th Air Force. He served as the first commander of Air Force Network Operations and led the development of the Air Force's cyber-space mission. Upon retirement, he joined the research faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia where he conducts research in cyber enterprise resiliency and the use of modeling to support national security decision making.

More often than not, major threats to the system come from internal sources, he said, and often result from mistakes rather than criminal intent. "It doesn't have to be nefarious."

Elder called for what he termed "better internal hygiene" of the system, including tightened controls and internal audits, to improve network security. "We need to assume that infection of the system would otherwise occur," he explained.

Computer systems have dramatically altered the military, as they have the civilian world, Elder said, citing changes in command and control and intelligence gathering, which have brought major improvements in situational awareness to field commanders. "We've become very dependent on these computer systems," he said.

He spoke of his many Alabama connections. Elder formerly served as the Commandant of the Air War College in Montgomery, and acknowledged the presence of former colleagues in the audience. More recently, he said, he has become acquainted with leaders of the growing Cyber Huntsville initiative, acknowledging "Huntsville's tackling of critical issues of importance to the nation," such as cyber security.

It will take greater resources to combat the problem, Elder said. He called for more young people to become "cyber patriots" and joked about the changing image of computer systems workers. "Our cyber patriots look a lot different from the big glasses, pony tail image you might think of. Future leaders in cyberspace will look more like business people than geeks."

He also called for increases in cyber security research funding to combat the problem that has seen breaches to both DoD and industrial networks in recent years.