Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
where that end is economic advancement. Attacking a country's infrastructure has
economic impact. Attacking a country's commerce has economic impact. Attack-
ing perceptions and instilling fear in the population has economic impact. The IA
architect considers organizational exposure in light of threat space interest in the
organization as an objective of war and as an objective of economic interest.
Cyber-warfare is not exclusively a military activity. There is no need to confront
a strong military when the same economic objective can be accomplished by attack-
ing the economic entity directly. Who is the enemy? A state-sponsored combatant
in uniform and with a gun? A non-state-sponsored terrorist? An independent cyber-
mercenary with a PhD in computer science? Your competition in the marketplace?
A buck-toothed antisocial teenager with nothing better to do than scope out weak-
nesses in corporate networks? Is it one enemy? Are they all enemies? The future of
IA considers the changing face of the threat space, including threat means, meth-
ods, motivations, and missions.
The threat space is constantly evolving. The sophistication of cyber-attacks is
increasing while the sophistication level of the cyber-attackers themselves is not.
Readily available attack tools on the Internet are configurable and adaptable to take
advantage of new vulnerabilities. There is the possibility (dare we say probability)
of a cyber-Pearl Harbor where the U.S. economy (not exclusively the military) suf-
fers overwhelming attack completely by surprise. This will likely come from many
different directions in many different forms with very little direct connection or
attribution to the actual source.
14.5 the Future of iA
2
Table 14.4 provides a summary of how to consider IA
2
in context of the FVF. Fol-
lowing the table are elaborations on the future of IA
2
.
The future of IA
2
includes refinement of the IA
2
Framework and IA
2
Pro-
cess. These refinements will occur as practical application of IA
2
provides addi-
tional insights. There will be substantial expansion on the IA quantification,
especially in modeling IA enterprise dynamics. There will also be more formal
alignment of IA
2
constructs with the disciplines of systems engineering and
enterprise systems engineering.
Situational awareness is a challenge for any operation. Relative to current objec-
tives, situational awareness discerns what the current circumstances are, who the
players are, who is in motion, and what they are doing. Situation awareness asks:
Are we making progress toward objectives, are operations effective, are operations
secure? Situational awareness applies to commercial organizations, government
organizations, and the military. Situational awareness applies to network opera-
tions as well as IA operations. IA
2
provides frameworks within which to define
situation awareness attributes, acceptable operation levels, warning thresholds, and
business context.
