U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jason Seales

“A threat to one of our networks is a threat to all, and it takes public stakeholders and private industry to build foundational cyber defenses in and through partnering,” says U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jason Seales, leader of the Under Advisement program that allows two-way information sharing with industry and has been critical in countering foreign cyber threats. Seales is no stranger to the cyber battlefield. The 782nd MI Battalion (Cyber Legion), headquartered at Fort Gordon, Georgia, has a footprint in four states – Maryland, Georgia, Hawaii, and Texas – and the Cyber Rangers support a U.S. Air Force Joint Force Headquarters – Cyber (JFHQ-C). As the team lead of a CMT (Combat Mission team), the Task Force Raider commander for JFHQ-C (Air Force), and detachment commander, Seales’ team successfully defended elections by deterring foreign influence into the process. Seales, in addition to being a Detachment Texas (Cyber Rangers) team lead and the former commander, previously served as the first director of the Joint Mission Operations Center (JMOC) in Georgia, and the lead for the Capability Support Detachment, Georgia, while with the 782d MI Battalion, and was assigned to the 780th MI Brigade for more than six years. After relinquishing his command of Detachment Texas in May 2022, Seales began his assignment with the Cyber National Mission Force headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. U.S. Cyber Command’s CNMF launched Under Advisement, or UNAD, in 2020, an unclassified program that allows partners across all sectors of industry to collaborate and share technical information on foreign threats in an increasingly contested and evolving cyber domain. CNMF Commander U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William J. Hartman has called Under Advisement “game-changing” as DoD can “enrich industry data with our expertise and unique insights, and share that back with trusted private sector partners—who then can better defend their networks at home, while we pursue malicious cyber actors abroad.” UNAD closely partners with fellow government-industry partner programs such as NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center and Department of Homeland Security’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative. “We’ve seen how critical UNAD has been in major cyber events such as SolarWinds, Hafnium, and Colonial Pipeline,” said Seales. “UNAD can be described as ‘CYBERCOM’s canaries in the coal mine.’” UNAD’s goal is to double the number of private-sector partnerships this year.