Robert Lentz, deputy assistant secretary for information and identity assurance at the Pentagon, spoke this week to a federal computer security conference in Washington.

His comments on challenges facing the Defense Department in the Information Age were reported by Government Technology news.

Despite the rising threat of attempted intrusions and other attacks from potential nation-state adversaries, Lentz told the FOSE conference, it was hard to ascertain the origin of most attacks against the Department of Defense, which he called the "No. 1 target" among U.S. government agencies.

Nonetheless, individual "hackers are still the preponderance of network issues seen day to day," he said.