Selil

What does the corporate world bring to cyber warfare? I asked this question in a conference setting surrounded by military types and to stunned amazement listened to twenty minutes of how the corporate world has no place in cyber warfare. War is an inherent government task and corporations have not part in this ultimate act of governance. Even though contractors outnumber government employees in all the halls of government. There are as many (more) contractors on the ground supposedly as there are soldiers in two different wars. Why the scathing reply? One would be the preponderance of intelligence types who glaringly protect their turf from others. The other reason is that government types don’t understand corporate types and that gulf is vast. When senior government types seem to move into the private sector they move into special preserves of think tanks or corporate gigs that rarely really reflect the reasoned world of corporate profit and loss statements.  Cyber warfare is important to a few constituencies in the corporate world. [Read more →]

It was a dark and stormy night. In the darkness so deep that hearts shrink from fear and apathy. The bright star of hope rose slowly and emblazoned on the star were the letters C-I-A. Oh, wait. That was swamp gas. Nothing to see here folks keep on walking. Just a little disturbance. Nothing to do with cyber warfare and all those three letter agencies are actually only assisting others. They wouldn’t be doing anything special. Dark coats, dark glasses, and darker hearts aside what are the biases of agencies that are charged with cyber and intelligence? First we might want to consider just what intelligence agencies do that might inform some the other discussion. [Read more →]

The military has been an active, interested, busy, and pretty much clueless newbie to the art and practice of cyber warfare. Recently I was told, “You don’t know what we don’t know behind the top secret doors of the Pentagon”. Pondering that thought it becomes evident after minimal analysis that a few things are true about the Pentagon, the National Security Agency, and various factions of other clandestine services. They all get the raw material (people and ideas) from the same sources as everybody else. The Pentagon does not pay substantially higher than most other venues. The Pentagon likely has some gee whiz stuff hiding around the top-secret environs and we can guess at what they might be. That being said when has the Pentagon or any other federal agency delivered a major product on time, to specification, or within budget? The military community attempts to hold a monopoly on warfare even as it fights two wars of insurgency. The military community doesn’t own cyber warfare anymore than it owns conflict in any domain. [Read more →]

Cyber warfare means many different things to people. As a population of researchers and practitioners we have a tendency to bring our own biases to the processes of evaluating the domain. Whether we are part of the military, intelligence, corporate, counter culture, or civilian communities we bring a certain set of expectations and thinking to the idea of cyber warfare. [Read more →]

As promised.

The dates to be aware of as discussed in class.

September 24th IDHS District 1 Event

October 7th, District 1 planning meeting

October 27th, 10AM STRIKE team meeting

November 17th IDHS presentation on gap study

Once again we are looking for evidence, past practices, or other documents of gap studies that have been done. Generating a large literature review of what has been done being the primary focus. This also allows you to see what work has been done in the past to compare our efforts.

Some links for the class.

DHS has a new tool called GAP, the tool is about gathering data more than providing a study. Link to transcript Link to video

FEMA Guidance document on the GAP tool (link)

The First Things Fast web page. There are some great links on the left regarding performance analysis.

Wikipedia link on Gap Analysis.

More as I get them.

“In academia there is no reason for two adversaries to take the field where one triumphs at the expense of the other. Rather in education, scholarship transcends winning and losing, by fostering learning” – anonymous

The new cyber coordinator position (AKA cyber czar) as described is a position with no real authority, lots of responsibility, and minimal resources. In most worldly views this is an abhorrent lack of command and control for the cyber security arena that smacks of failure before it starts. I on the other hand a lowly professor at a third tier university think not only can the job get done, the mere fact that so many luminaries have passed on the position is good indication of what is wrong with the bureaucracy in the first place. They’re all a bunch of dunderheads. [Read more →]

Here is my submission for South by South West! Help a guy out we need all the votes we can get. If you like the idea vote it up! [Read more →]

I’m ugly, bald, old, and fat. Given the aforementioned I can do little about the first three that won’t require substantial surgery or a time machine. Though surgery is always an option on the last so is simply not sitting in front of my computer and hitting refresh on my favorite websites.  Running to lose weight though is kind of like beating yourself with a cudgel so it feels good when you stop. I can’t say that I am to smart but I can pay attention and listen to my body. Mine told me to run. [Read more →]

It has been over a month since I updated you on the garden! In those weeks, we went away on vacation, which can spell doom for a garden due to lack of water or back aches for the garden due to an abundance of weeds. We returned to neither of these because we paid a young lady to water for us and the nature of the high density garden is weed free! [Read more →]

A couple of thing you should know about me. First, I am in the process of completing my PhD and second, I have recently taken up running. I began both of these pursuits reluctantly.

I began my PhD course work in 2005. I did not want to be a PhD student as I already had two masters degrees in very diverse fields (History and Computer Science). But I had met a very interesting professor who invited me to take just one class – the one she was teaching the next semester – as a non-degree seeking student. So I did. It was a fantastic class and she is the best professor I have ever had. And then near the end of that class she asked me what class I was going to take next. And then when was I going to apply to be a full PhD student. And there I was, a full time PhD student wondering how I managed to get talked in to this, always reserving the right to quit because after all, I didn’t want to do this in the first place and taking in every bit of knowledge and experience that came my way. [Read more →]

Recently it was brought to my attention that Raytheon was seeking Cyber Warriors in answer to Presidents Obama’s call for cyber security response and change.  When you consider that the resulting legislation storm has left us with a host of actions on the table and you have a perfect storm. David Ronfeldt recently published a substantive treatise on the state of the current debate discussing specifically a collaborative model for cyber defense. Considering the ramifications and past practices his position echoed by Michael Tanji in “We need a broker not a boss” is likely our only hope for success. Let me explain more in depth. [Read more →]

It looks like the Department of Defense (DOD) is going to create a cyber warfare command that may have a war fighting capacity. There are issues with creating a single command structure, there are issues with the military trying to wage war in cyber space, there are issues with the political and legal systems involving Title 10, and there are of course training issues. Creating a command around cyber space could be one of the silliest or most brilliant ideas in a long time. When you add in the absolute risk to civil rights and current protections it is something that should be discussed. [Read more →]

Seeing this meme roll through the Web 2.0 sphere as shocked and horrified stories of adult children are arrogantly disgusted that their social activities are ousted to their parents is hilarious. What isn’t so hilarious is the whimsical childishness of this group of social software natives stepping all over the roots of the Ent’s as they blather away.  The hormone laden slimy sexual proclivities of the drug laden culture of 20 something’s blared across Twitter in a mind numbed orgasm of social media is already enough to make a real digital native ill. Oh my did you know there was this thingy called the Internet. Shock and horror and there are people on it too. Let me grab my cane as a toddle over to find the “any” key. [Read more →]