The Defense Department is planning to spend $500 million to research new cybersecurity technologies including cloud computing and encrypted data processing, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said Tuesday. The Pentagon will also provide “seed capital for companies to develop dual-use technologies that serve our cybersecurity needs,” Lynn said in prepared remarks delivered at a technology conference in San Francisco. “Cyberdefense is not a military mission, like defending our airspace, where the sole responsibility lies with the military,” Lynn said. “The overwhelming percentage of our nation’s critical infrastructure — including the Internet itself — is largely in private hands. It is going to take a public-private partnership to secure our networks.”

The $500 million is part of the Pentagon’s 2012 budget request of $2.3 billion to improve the Defense Department’s cyber capabilities. At a Pentagon news conference Monday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the research money, to be spent through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, “big investment dollars, looking to the future.”