http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/gc_1158611596104.shtm

National Cybersecurity Awareness Month

• How You Can Contribute to Cybersecurity Awareness
• Cybersecurity Awareness Events 2009
• Cybersecurity Resources

October marks the sixth annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. The theme for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2009 is “Our Shared Responsibility” to reinforce the message that all computer users, not just industry and government, have a responsibility to practice good “cyber hygiene” and to protect themselves and their families at home, at work and at school.

Americans can follow a few simple steps to keep themselves safe online. By doing so, you will not only keep your personal assets and information secure but you will also help to improve the overall security of cyberspace.

It is Our Shared Responsibility to stay safe online.

How You Can Contribute to Cybersecurity Awareness

Here are a few steps that you can take to not only participate in National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, but also enhance cybersecurity 365 days a year:

Take Action - There are many things businesses, schools, and home users can do to practice cybersecurity during National Cybersecurity Awareness Month and beyond.

• Make sure that you have anti-virus software and firewalls installed, properly configured, and up-to-date. New threats are discovered every day, and keeping your software updated is one of the easier ways to protect yourself from an attack. Set your computer to automatically update for you.
• Update your operating system and critical program software. Software updates offer the latest protection against malicious activities. Turn on automatic updating if that feature is available.
• Back up key files. If you have important files stored on your computer, copy them onto a removable disc and store it in a safe place.

Endorse - Demonstrate your commitment to cybersecurity.

• Show your organization's commitment to cybersecurity and National Cybersecurity Awareness Month by signing the online endorsement form at www.staysafeonline.org.
• Create a section for cybersecurity on your organization's Web site. Download banners atwww.staysafeonline.org and post them on your organization's home page.
• Add a signature block to your e-mail:
  "October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Stay Safe Online! Visithttp://www.staysafeonline.org for the latest cybersecurity tips."

Educate - Find out what more you can do to secure cyberspace and how you can share this with others.

• Participate in the National Cyber Security Alliance Cyber Security Awareness Volunteer Education (C-SAVE) Program and help educate elementary, middle, and high-school students about Internet safety and security. For more information or to download the C-Save curriculum, visit www.staysafeonline.org/content/c-save.
• Review cybersecurity tips with your family.
• Print and post these cybersecurity tips near your computer and network printers.
• Use regular communications in your business—newsletters, e-mail alerts, Web sites, etc.—to increase awareness on issues like updating software processes, protecting personal identifiable information, and securing your wireless network.

For more information on Awareness Month and for additional material, please visit www.us-cert.gov and www.staysafeonline.org/ncsam.

Cybersecurity Resources

The Department partners with a number of cybersecurity organizations throughout the year to educate all citizens on the importance of implementing effective cybersecurity practices. These partnerships also make National Cybersecurity Awareness Month possible by uniting public and private sector efforts to secure cyberspace. National Cybersecurity Awareness Month materials and resources can be found at the following sites:

• The National Cyber Security Division outlines the Department's strategic national cybersecurity objectives.
• The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) offers safety tips, incident reports, and the latest cyber alerts.
• The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) is a collaborative effort among experts in the security, non-profit, academic, and government fields to teach consumers, small businesses, and members of the education community about Internet security by providing free tips, checklists, and best practices for remaining safe while online.
• The Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) comprises members of all 50 states, local governments, and U.S. territories and districts, and provides downloadable awareness materials including newsletters, posters, bookmarks, and briefings.
• The Federal Trade Commission's OnGuard Online Web site provides practical tips and downloadable print and Web materials about how to avoid Internet fraud and how to protect personal information.

NATIONAL CENTER FOR CRITICAL INFORMATION PROCESSING AND STORAGE

NATIONAL CENTER FOR CRITICAL INFORMATION PROCESSING AND STORAGE

The Committee recommends $46,130,000 within Security Activities for data center development. This includes the budget request level (which includes operation and maintenance costs for the National Center for Critical Information Processing and Storage [NCCIPS] and the second data center) and an additional $22,300,000 solely to be used to support transition of Department systems to NCCIPS, to support the dual cost of operation and maintenance during the transition, and to develop a sharable common operating environment. NCCIPS is a federally owned and managed facility established to reduce Federal data center costs and to protect critical Federal information.

The Committee also includes language in the bill withholding the availability of $200,000,000 for obligation until the Department of Homeland Security submits to the Committee the report on data center transition required by Senate Report 110-84, which is to include: (1) the schedule for data transition by Department component; (2) costs required to complete the transition by fiscal year; (3) identification of items associated with the transition required to be procured and the related procurement schedule; and (4) the identification of any transition costs provided in fiscal years 2007 and 2008. The report submitted should separate these requirements and costs by data center and include fiscal year 2009 data.

Consistent with section 888 of Public Law 107-296, the Committee instructs the Department to implement the consolidation plan in a manner that shall not result in a reduction to the Coast Guard's Operations Systems Center mission or its Government-employed or contract staff levels. A general provision is included for this purpose.

HOMELAND SECURE DATA NETWORK

Included in the amount recommended by the Committee is $47,673,000, as requested in the budget, for the Homeland Secure Data Network.

ANALYSIS AND OPERATIONS

Appropriations, 2008 1	$306,000,000
Budget estimate, 2009	333,262,000
Committee recommendation 2	320,200,000
1 Excludes a rescission of $8,700,000 pursuant to Public Law 110-161.
2 Excludes a rescission of $2,500,000.

The account supports activities to improve the analysis and sharing of threat information, including activities of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the Office of Operations Coordination.

COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS

The Committee recommends $320,200,000 for Analysis and Operations. This is an increase of $14,200,000 from the fiscal year 2008 level and a decrease of $13,062,000 from the budget request. The details of these recommendations are included in a classified annex accompanying this report.

DHS INTELLIGENCE EXPENDITURE PLAN

No later than 60 days after the date of enactment of this act, the Secretary shall submit a fiscal year 2009 expenditure plan for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis [I&A], including balances carried forward from prior years, that includes the following: (1) fiscal year 2009 expenditures and staffing allotted for each program, as identified in the March 2008 expenditure plan submitted to the Committee, as compared to each of years 2007 and 2008; (2) all funded versus on-board positions, including Federal full-time equivalents [FTE], contractors, and reimbursable and non-reimbursable detailees; (3) an explanation for maintaining contract staff in lieu of Government FTE; (4) a plan, including dates or timeframes for achieving key milestones, to reduce the office's reliance on contract staff in lieu of Federal FTE; (5) funding, by object classification, including a comparison to fiscal years 2007 and 2008; and (6) the number of I&A funded employees supporting organizations outside I&A and within DHS.

STATE AND LOCAL FUSION CENTERS

The Committee directs the Department's Chief Intelligence Officer to continue quarterly updates to the Committees on Appropriations that detail progress in placing DHS intelligence professionals in State and local fusion centers. These reports shall include: the qualification criteria used by DHS to decide where and how to place DHS intelligence analysts and related technology; total Federal expenditures to support each center to date and during the most recent quarter of the current fiscal year, in the same categorization as materials submitted to the Committees on Appropriations on March 23, 2007; the location of each fusion center, including identification of those with DHS personnel, both operational and planned; the schedule for operational stand-up of planned fusion centers and their locations; the number of DHS-funded employees located at each fusion center, including details on whether the employees are contract or government staff; the privacy protection policies of each center, including the number of facility personnel trained in Federal privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties laws and standards; and the number of local law enforcement agents at each center approved or pending approval to receive and review classified intelligence information.

U.S. Homeland Security 1,000 cybersecurity experts

U.S. Homeland Security wants to hire 1,000 cybersecurity experts

Dept. of Homeland Security needs experts needed to fill out vast network protection goals
By Michael Cooney , Network World , 10/01/2009The Department of Homeland Security is looking to hire 1,000 cybersecurity professionals in the next three years according to the agency’s secretary Janet Napolitano.

The department now has the authority to recruit and hire cybersecurity professionals across DHS over the next three years in order to help fulfill its mission to protect the nation’s cyber infrastructure, systems and networks, she said.

NetworkWorld Extra: 12 changes that would give US cybersecurity a much needed kick in the pants

“This new hiring authority will enable DHS to recruit the best cyber analysts, developers and engineers in the world to serve their country by leading the nation’s defenses against cyber threats,” Napolitano stated. DHS his the focal point for the security of cyberspace -- including analysis, warning, information sharing, vulnerability reduction, mitigation, and recovery efforts for public and private critical infrastructure information systems.

The hiring authority, which results from a collaborative effort between DHS, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget, lets DHS staff up to 1,000 positions over three years across all DHS agencies to fulfill critical cybersecurity roles—including cyber risk and strategic analysis; cyber incident response; vulnerability detection and assessment; intelligence and investigation; and network and systems engineering.

The need for DHS to bolster its security realm is a hot topic. A Government Accountability Office report this year said that while DHS established the National Cyber Security Division to be responsible for leading national day-today cybersecurity efforts that has not enabled DHS to become the national focal point for security as envisioned.

The GAO said the Defense Department and other organizations within the intelligence community that have significant resources and capabilities have come to dominate federal efforts. The group told the GAO there also needs to be an independent cybersecurity organization that leverages and integrates the capabilities of the private sector, civilian government, law enforcement, military, intelligence community, and the nation's international allies to address incidents against the nation's critical cyber systems and functions.

The cybersecurity jobs announcement comes on the same day that the FBI said fraudsters are targeting social networking sites with increased frequency and users need to take precautions, the FBI warned.

The FBI said fraudsters continue to hijack accounts on social networking sites and spread malicious software by using various techniques. One technique involves the use of spam to promote phishing sites, claiming there has been a violation of the terms of agreement or some other type of issue which needs to be resolved. Other spam entices users to download an application or view a video. Some spam appears to be sent from users' "friends", giving the perception of being legitimate. Once the user responds to the phishing site, downloads the application, or clicks on the video link, their computer, telephone or other digital device becomes infected, the FBI stated.

Meanwhile legislators are trying to encourage cooperation among universities and businesses to develop technology needed to carry out a strategic government effort to fight cyber attacks.

A US House subcommittee is recommending a bill that calls for a university-industry task force to coordinate joint cybersecurity research and development projects between business and academia. The Cybersecurity Research and Development Amendments Act of 2009 was approved recently by the House Committee on Science and Technology's Research and Science Education Subcommittee.

The legislation would set up a scholarship program that pays college bills for students who study in fields related to cybersecurity. They would also get summer internships in the federal government. In return the students would agree to work as cybersecurity professionals within the federal government for a period equal to the number of years they received scholarships. If there aren't any jobs there, they would work for state or local governments in the same capacity or teach cybersecurity courses.

Department of Homeland Security on Lookout for IT Security Pros

Department of Homeland Security on Lookout for IT Security Pros

By: Brian Prince

The Department of Homeland Security has gotten the OK to hire as many as 1,000 new IT pros during the next three years to bolster cyber-security.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano made the announcement Oct. 1 during remarks tied to the start of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The new hiring authority is the result of a collaborative effort between DHS, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Office of Management and Budget.

"Effective cyber-security requires all partners—individuals, communities, government entities and the private sector—to work together to protect our networks and strengthen our cyber-resiliency," Napolitano said. "This new hiring authority will enable DHS to recruit the best cyber-analysts, developers and engineers in the world to serve their country by leading the nation's defenses against cyber-threats."

The list of positions to be filled covers areas such as cyber-risk and strategic analysis, cyber-incident response, and vulnerability detection and assessment.

The need to hire more security pros has been noted by others, such as in a report from the Partnership for Public Service and consulting company Booz Allen Hamilton released in July. In that report, the authors outlined a number of problems involved in recruiting and hiring cyber-security pros, as well as strategies for resolving the problems.

President Obama declared May 29 that his administration was making cyber-security a national priority. As part of that effort, the president authorized a 60-day assessment of the government's cyber-security. In addition, he announced the creation of the position of national cyber-coordinator, but it has not yet been filled.

Napolitano emphasized the importance of partnerships between the public and private sectors in protecting the country's cyber-infrastructure. DHS officials said they do not anticipate needing to fill all 1,000 slots.

"This is impressive and clearly an indication that DHS has won confidence in the White House to lead the federal government's cyber-security response," said Roger Thornton, CTO of Fortify Software.

The fog of (cyber) war

Cybermilitias, black hat hackers and other non-nation-state bad guys blur the lines on the
virtual battlefield.

Don Tennant

Analysts and strategists gathered at the Cyber Warfare 2009 conference in London last
January were grappling with some thorny problems associated with the cyberaggression
threat. One that proved particularly vexing was the matter of exactly what constitutes
cyberwarfare under international law. There's no global agreement on the definitions of
cyberwarfare or cyberterrorism, so how does a nation conform to the rule of law if it's
compelled to respond to a cyberattack?
Back in the U.S. trenches, drawing up a legal battle plan is indeed proving to be
extraordinarily complex. Those definitions are especially elusive when you consider that
no one can even be sure who the potential combatants are.
"There is some real work that needs to be done, not only in the U.S., but globally, to think
about what is a use of force or an act of war in cyberspace," says Paul Kurtz, a partner at
Good Harbor Consulting LLC in Arlington, Va., and a former senior director for critical
infrastructure protection on the White House's Homeland Security Council.
The need to establish global norms about what is acceptable behavior in cyberspace, he
says, is complicated by the fact that "the weapons are not just in the hands of nationstates.
They're essentially in everybody's hands."
Steven Chabinsky
"Laws of war would forbid targeting purely civilian infrastructure," adds Steven
Chabinsky, senior cyberadvisor to the director of national intelligence. "But terrorists, of
course, don't limit themselves by the Geneva Conventions."
Time, effort and expertise
Further fogging up the battlefield is the fact that it's nearly impossible to identify all of
the potential targets. It is possible to conduct a threat assessment, however, and there
appears to be general consensus in the cyberdefense community that the biggest threat in
terms of scale is presented by nation-states.
"Cyberattacks which seek to manipulate [an adversary's] critical infrastructures would
take more time, effort and expertise than mere data theft," says Kenneth Geers, U.S.
representative to the Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence in Tallinn,
Estonia. "But computer network defenders should understand that time, effort and
expertise are resources that militaries and foreign intelligence services often have in
abundance."
Analysts and former intelligence officials, including Kurtz, say that, not surprisingly,
China and Russia top the list of countries with highly developed cyberwarfare
capabilities. Kurtz also named Iran and North Korea as countries with known
cyberwarfare aspirations.
While Chabinsky declined to be specific because of concerns about compromising
intelligence-gathering methods, he affirmed that the U.S. has identified "a number of
sophisticated nation-state actors who we believe have the capability to bring down
portions of our critical infrastructure." Fortunately, he added, "we don't think they have
the intent to do so, [since] our country would respond accordingly, and not necessarily
symmetrically through cyber means."
On the other hand, Kurtz notes, governments "would have more resources at their
disposal in order to disguise or bury the true source of an attack." But, he says, "It would
be a grave mistake to believe that a small, well-funded cell could not inflict very serious
damage on the information infrastructure supporting the U.S. and the global economy."
Resources and motive
Chabinsky notes that deterring or responding to cyberwarfare threats from other countries
is more in the comfort zone of national governments. "There's a lot more to worry about
should the same computer network attack capabilities exist in the hands of irrational or
otherwise unrestrained criminals or terrorists," he says.
Intelligence officials and analysts agree that so far, there's little direct threat of a
cyberattack by organized terrorist groups. "Nonstate actors such as al-Qaeda probably do
not possess the infrastructure or expertise to attempt a cyberattack that would rival the
shock value of using bullets and explosives," Geers says.
But these officials and analysts recognize that terrorist groups have the resources and
motive to fund such activity by others.
Although terrorists may not be capable of attacking our critical infrastructure themselves,
"it's less clear whether they could find a hired gun to do so," Chabinsky says. "Obviously,
terrorist groups have the intent to harm us, are aware of the potential impact of a
successful cyberattack and would find the ability to attack us from a distance quite
appealing."
According to Chabinsky, some potential "hired guns" are in an extraordinarily effective
position to cause trouble. That position is within the walls of corporate America.
"I think the primary cyber-risk to our critical infrastructure is from disgruntled employees
who have insider knowledge and access," Chabinsky says. "Insider threats can take
advantage of the most serious vulnerabilities; in fact, they can create them. Could they
sell their capabilities to a terrorist group? Certainly."
Criminal element
To make matters worse, it's not only terrorist groups that are equipped to pose this sort of
threat. In fact, they may not even be the most ominous nongovernmental source of
potential cyberdamage.
Mike Theis
"I would say that currently, organized criminal activity provides a more pervasive and
damaging threat than organized terrorists," says Mike Theis, who until recently served as
chief of cyber counterintelligence at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an
agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.
That could change at any time, Theis says.
While the motives of organized terrorists and organized criminals differ, their profitgenerating
tactics are largely the same. Terrorists use cybercrime to fund their ideologyinspired
activities, and criminals do it for the sake of profit itself (see sidebar, next page).
Theis cites the infamous Russian Business Network as an example of the cybercriminals
highest on the most-wanted list, but he pointed out that it would be difficult to name any
organized crime syndicate that's not heavily engaged in electronic crime.
"Traditional organized crime has now moved to cyberspace to commit, support and
enhance their crimes," says Ira Winkler, founder and president of Internet Security
Advisors Group. These crime syndicates are "performing intelligence and
counterintelligence collection of their own to see what governments are doing to stop
their efforts."
Moreover, Winkler says, drug cartels, organized crime gangs and terrorist organizations
are joining forces to combat the U.S. military and law enforcement agencies. "Possibly
most important is that Russian crime gangs are heavily involved with the Taliban and al-
Qaeda in the distribution of the poppy crops they grow," he says. "They are interested in
stopping any coalition efforts to slow down the poppy distribution."
According to Chabinsky, cybercriminals have increased the scope and sophistication of
their activities beyond those of all but a few nation-states. "There's big money to be had
over the Internet, and organized crime is spending a lot of time and money to enhance
their tradecraft," he says. "Organized cybercrime concerns me not just because of the
money being stolen, but because cybercriminals are gaining the capacity to harm our
critical infrastructure and could be motivated to do so as part of an extortion scheme."
Adding to the complexity of the problem are questions about the preparedness of other
countries to combat the threat.
Cyberweapons
According to former NRO official Mike Theis, terrorists and criminals pose similar
threats with respect to illicit profit generation. The following are some examples of
activity these groups might aim to perpetrate:
• Theft of personal information that could be used for sale to the highest bidder or
on an information exchange.
• Theft of trade secrets, intellectual property or superior business processes. "It
could be something as simple as your customer list, but there is usually a lot more
of value than that," Theis says.
• Cyberhostage taking. If the contents of your entire hard drive were remotely
encrypted by a hacker, would you pay $100 to get the decryption key? Would
10,000 people like you do the same?
• Cyberblackmailing. How much would you pay to prevent your
family/customers/competitors/regulators from knowing something that was found
on your computer?
• Cyberslaving. The perpetrator installs a back door or "loader" on your machine
and sells it to the highest bidder. It would allow the buyer to install any type of
software on that machine without being detected. "The last I heard, the average
price was still about $1 per machine," Theis says. "It's not uncommon to see
machines purchased in blocks of 10,000 or more in order to launch a denial-ofservice
attack."
"So basically," Theis says, "anything that can be done in the world of brick and mortar
has some type of a cyber equivalent."
"There is reason to consider whether some nation-states lack the ability to control
organized crime within their borders, lack the resources to control criminals who
victimize people and businesses outside their borders, or suffer from corruption in which
government officials are complicit in lucrative criminal schemes," Chabinsky says.
The hacker myth
Another complicating factor is that these criminal elements are anything but cohesive
units with consistent objectives.
"One of the things that's very tricky about cyberspace is you can have criminal
organizations easily morph with hacker organizations, and you may have a cell within
that that may have a different purpose or objective than the criminal organization," Kurtz
explains. "This comes down to the essence of what makes the cybertradecraft so
complex. It's only a keystroke difference between getting inside someone's system and
shutting it down."
Indeed, the role that hackers play on the cyberwarfare stage is widely underestimated. "I
think that a big myth is that cybercrime is still about a 15-year-old kid doing Web
defacements," Chabinsky says.
In truth, the hacker element is gaining influence worldwide, and that influence is being
targeted by governments. In China, hacker groups have traditionally been motivated by
national pride, says Carl Setzer, an associate partner at Dallas-based iSight Partners Inc.,
a security research firm that monitors hacking communities in China .
The government has done a good job of channeling that pride toward its own ends, even
if government officials don't issue direct orders to hacker groups, Setzer says. Still, iSight
Partners says it has found evidence of direct interaction between large Chinese hacker
groups and the government, a relationship Setzer characterizes as "indirect control."
According to Winkler, China has a problem it has to acknowledge. "They have the
Internet so filtered that even if [cybercrime] is not supported by the Chinese government,
given the hold they have on their Internet connections, they can't claim clean hands," he
says. "For them to say, 'We aren't noticing attack traffic' is absurd."
Plausible deniability
Of course, the Chinese government is hardly alone in its aim to manipulate the role of
hackers. Theis says cyberconflicts anywhere in the world that are attributed to the efforts
of "patriotic hackers" tend to be the stuff of myth. Usually, he says, they're the "wellthought-
out efforts of nation-states with well-developed strategies and resources."
Although Theis has no doubt that patriotic hackers participate in cyberconflicts, he's
convinced that far more is ascribed to them than real-world conditions would sensibly
allow.
"To be truly effective on anything other than the smallest of scales takes strategic
planning, resourcing and practiced execution to ensure activities are focused at the right
place and time to be a force multiplier, and not wasted on the overkill of nonessential
targets or activities," Theis says. "It seems ludicrous that countries that have stated their
understanding of the importance of cyberconflict dominance and have dedicated
resources to that effort would not use them in a decisive way, but [instead] would depend
on patriotic hackers to just happen to get it right and just at the right time."
Still, governments have every reason to want to strain the limits of credibility, Theis says.
"It's a nice myth to perpetuate if you're trying to maintain plausible deniability."
Jeremy Kirk and Sumner Lemon of the IDG News Service contributed to this story.
Next: A short history of hacks, worms and cyberterror
Related Links
• Internet Warfare: Are we focusing on the wrong things?
• The fog of (cyber) war
• A short history of hacks, worms and cyberterror
• Software: The eternal battlefield in the unending cyberwars
• The grid: The new ground zero in Internet warfare
• Russia's cyber blockade of Georgia worked. Could it happen here?
• Cyberwar's first casualty: your privacy
• The Internet is down. What does that really mean?

Cyber Warfare’s threat to Critical National Infrastructure

Cyber Warfare
Written By Jeffrey Bernstein
Published April 2009 in MIS-ASIA Recently, news concerning the ongoing security compromise of the North American power grid via various breaches of computing infrastructure was distributed throughout news and media outlets worldwide. While not a new problem by any means, the issue warrants attention from the international public, commercial and government sector audiences. The electronic computing environments that make up a country’s infrastructure are often taken for granted. However, a disruption to only a single live production computer system can create cascading consequences across multiple sectors. For example, a computer breach that disrupts the distribution of electrical power across a region could lead to the forced shutdown of networked communications and controls within the transportation sector. Air traffic, road traffic and rail transportation might become affected as a direct result. By extension, subsequent disruption of emergency services would also occur. Recent highly publicised cyber attacks on the republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Georgia are representative of the growing problem at hand. Because each country has a unique environment, cyber attacks will yield varying consequences from nation to nation. Georgia, for instance, was a relative latecomer to adopt Internet technologies. Because of this, the country’s population of fewer than five million saw little effect beyond service denial to many of its government Web sites. Cyber attacks have far less impact on a country such as Georgia than they might on more Internet-dependent places such as Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore or the United States where vital services including government, transportation, power and banking depend on the Internet. These increasingly frequent, sophisticated and targeted international cyber incidents involving denial of service, espionage, propaganda and information theft are driving governments to develop effective tactical and strategic cyber-warfare capabilities. While government military forces have been traditionally more equipped for warfare involving guns, tanks and missiles, almost all now recognise the need to adopt strategies to support success in this new electronic theatre of operations. Most countries, of course, deny that their cyber capabilities are involved with any of the higher-profile international cyber security events that we read about in the press almost daily. Regardless of the truth in these denials, the anonymous nature of the Internet provides plausible deniability for attack sources. Mission statement In the Americas, the current mission statement of the United States Air Force is to ‘Fly, Fight and Win...in Air, Space and Cyberspace’. Similarly, in Eastern Asia, The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reportedly continues to mature its integrated network electronic warfare and space/counter-space capabilities. China and the US are only two of the countries included in the rapidly expanding list of nations now racing to assemble arsenals of cyber-weaponry. In fact, it is well-documented and commonly accepted by the international security community that more than 140 countries are actively
developing cyber-espionage and warfare capabilities. The common thinking for all is to facilitate increased superiority over an adversary. When it comes to the modern-day battleground, ‘bits and bytes’ now accompany the ‘bullets and bombs’ that have historically powered warfare. As multinational cyber arsenals continue to mature, international concerns over operational cyber ‘espionage’ and ‘warfare’ grow. Perhaps most vulnerable to attack are the critical infrastructure and key resources that operate within any particular country. Critical infrastructure resources support the crucial services that generally serve as the supporting foundation for any society. Cyber security protection With the majority of global vital infrastructure operated by the commercial sectors, the issue of cyber security protection is weighing heavily on both industry and government. For example, in the US, 80 per cent of critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the commercial sectors. Some critical infrastructure elements are so essential that their destruction, disruption or exploitation could have a debilitating impact on a country’s national security or economic well-being. While critical infrastructure categorisation varies from country to country, it usually includes some combination of the following sectors from industry and government; • Government services • Law enforcement, fire and emergency response • Banking and financial services • Transportation • Power including electricity, oil and gas • Public works including water and drainage • Internet, media and telecommunications • Agriculture and food supply • Health Many countries also categorise prominent public places, national monuments and high-profile events as critical infrastructure. Power and utility sectors One specific area of concern is in the power and utility sectors where Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) industrial control systems monitor, coordinate and control process. Within the enterprise, information technology systems typically have a lifecycle of five years or less allowing for enhancements designed to mitigate the latest known security threats. By comparison, many mission critical SCADA control systems have been in production for 15 years and sometimes longer. Unfortunately, many of these systems were originally architected with little to no concern for security. Because of this, Internet-exposed SCADA-based systems and the organisations that operate them remain highly vulnerable to Internet-borne threat. A recent article from the North America-based Council on Foreign Relations quoted a well-known economist as having estimated that a shutdown of electrical power to any sizeable region for more than 10 days would stop more than 70 per cent of all economic activity in that region. Given the
costs involved to finance a traditional military attack, is it any surprise that cyber-warfare strategies are gaining attention? Perhaps the most unique aspect of cyber-warfare is its ability to be launched from anywhere in the world. Computers that are physically located in foreign countries may also be compromised and used as a launch platform for attack making identification of any initial attack source extremely difficult. Cyber-attacks are inexpensive, easy to deliver and leave few fingerprints. Therefore, they will continue to remain a component of modern-day warfare. While countries around the world are in the process of integrating offensive and defensive cyber capabilities into their overall military strategies, the responsibility to protect high-value critical infrastructure targets will remain a significant challenge. Because of this, government and industry need to collaborate to develop protection strategies that carefully consider how a cyber war or attack could affect society and world economies.

Battlespace