National Security Operations Center

The National Security Operations Center (NSOC) or Directorate K is the part of the United States National Security Agency responsible for current operations and time-sensitive signals intelligence (SIGINT) reporting for the United States SIGINT System (USSS).

NSOC is an operations center on a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week basis, providing total situational awareness across the NSA/CSS enterprise for both foreign Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance, maintaining cognizance of national security information needs, and monitoring unfolding world events.

In the ensuing hours, NSA leaders raced from office to office to gather the information necessary to assemble a coordinated response for the agency and national leadership.

This incident demonstrated the need for a dedicated watch center to respond to breaking world events.

The NSA Assistant Director for Production (ADP) at that time, John E. Morrison, Jr., proposed to the Director of NSA (DIRNSA) that a single National SIGINT watch center be established.