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92
COMPUTER
SECURITY
An example of a presumption in
this context is: “If a tracked object
enters a restricted airspace, then
assign a weapon to that object and
engage.” An instance of engaging
the human operator would occur if,
for example, the US were to have a
chance to intercept missiles over
another country. In this case, intercepting
the missiles would be lawful
but the potential consequences—
such as residual debris from the
missiles’ chemical, nuclear, or biological
payloads landing on the other
country’s territory—would need to be
weighed against the risk of the missiles
reaching their targets.
Other aspects of preparedness
could be incorporated into cyber
C2/BM systems, such as a brokering
capability to facilitate controlled dissemination
of information among
cyberoperators from different
administrative domains who are collaborating
in an ad hoc but formal
coalition, or persistent operations to
defend assets through their combined
cyberwarfare resources.
For example, a legal advisor might
need to subscribe to certain data
feeds to pull together the information
required to make a legal determination,
but he or she might not have a
need to know about where the data
originated or related information.
That is, the brokering capability provides
a means for enabling the sharing
of information by protecting the anonymity
of the information sources
and their methods of collection, only
sharing what cyberoperators playing
particular roles are entitled to access.
Such an information-sharing capability
would have been useful to the
informal assembly of private- and
public-sector organizations that came
to the aid of Estonia in 2007.
Systems have become increasingly
interconnected through trends such
as the adoption of cloud computing
and the creation of systems of systems.
These compositions provide
one or more value-added capabilities
that none of the individual systems
can deliver on their own. Preparedness
for cyberattacks will entail
cooperation between the many stakeholders
in these systems, even with
sound mechanisms for containment
of behavior between systems.
Efforts at achieving cyberpreparedness,
such as that by NIST, are
a step in the right direction, as the
NIST report on the smart grid shows:
Some of the responses [to cyber
attacks] must be autonomic—timely
response is a critical requirement for
grid reliability. However, for a quick
response to treat the symptom locally
and effectively, the scope and extent
of the impact of the failure needs to be
quickly determined. Not all responses
are autonomic however. New research
is needed to measure and identify
the scope of a cyber attack and the
dynamic cyber threat response options
available in a way that can serve as a
decision support tool for the human
operators.
We believe that our
research is on target
regarding support for
cyber command-and-control understanding,
planning, and decision
activities. Preparation must include
provision of integrated full-spectrum
capabilities in cyber C2/BM systems
along with specialized dynamic virtual
cells like the proposed legal cell
enabling collaboration among cyberoperators
proactively.
James Bret Michael is a professor in
the Department of Computer Science
and a member of the Center for Cyber
Warfare at the Naval Postgraduate
School. Contact him at bmichael@
nps.edu.
_____
John F. Sarkesain is a senior engineer
with the Aerospace Corporation. Contact
him at john.f.sarkesain@aero.org.
Thomas C. Wing eld is a professor
at the George C. Marshall European
Center for Security Studies. Contact
him at ____________________
thomas.c.wing eld@marshallcenter.org.
_______
Georgios Dementis is a lieutenant
in the Hellenic Navy. Contact him at
ydementis@gmail.com.
_______________
Gonçalo Nuno Baptista de Sousa is
a lieutenant in the Portuguese Navy.
Contact him at _______________
goncalobsousa@gmail.
___ com.
Editor: Jeffrey Voas, National Institute
of Standards and Technology;
j.voas@ieee.org
_________
________
_________________
Disclaimer
The views and conclusions
contained herein are those
of the authors and should not
be interpreted as necessarily
representing the official policies
or endorsements of the US
Government.
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