Northrop Grumman has grown to a $30-billion-a-year company by designing and building some of the world's most sophisticated war-fighting tools, be it stealth bombers, airborne surveillance systems or nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines. So it certainly draws one's attention when the director of enterprise security and identity management at the Los Angeles-based defense and technology fixture describes a new type of war, at least here in America. It is the type of fight that cannot be won in the skies or on the sea, with B-2 Spirit bombers or Nimitz-class supercarriers. "It's now a digital war," Northrop Grumman's Keith Ward says. "It's a paradigm shift. The main emphasis after 9/11 was protection of facilities. But are there other, electronic ways attackers can do it rather than going through the front door?"
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