Despite overall uncertainty of exactly where defense money would be allocated under the President’s FY’20 budget request released last week, Pentagon officials did allows that their agency would receive $9.6 billion in cyber funding – $1 billion more than this year. The money would go toward not only hardware and software, but also toward the construction of new buildings to house DOD’s increasing cyber infrastructure.  In fact, nearly 20% of “cyber” money would be for construction.  Beyond that, over $500 million would go to support Cyber Command headquarters with “some” of the remaining funds to be targeted at R&D for both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.  While CYBERCOM will fall short of their original FY’19 goal of spending $75 million through non-traditional procurement methods, CYBERCOM chief General Paul Nakasone predicted that his organization will come fairly close to that target and will continue to make expanded use of innovative acquisition techniques such as Other Transaction Authority.  General Nakasone stated that CYBERCOM needs such flexible tools in order to meet the changing face of threats.   “We invested in tools—significant tools for how we operate with our teams”, he said. “Secondly, big data analysis. Thirdly, an opportunity for our developers to operate offsite at a facility to look at new networks, new capabilities, new infrastructures.”  Cyber spending continues to soar, both in DOD and civilian agencies.  Make sure your company is prepared to meet the demand.