Back in April 17, 2002, DoD executives established U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) as part of the changes brought about by the Unified Command Plan. NORTHCOM is responsible for homeland defense and also serves as head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a U.S.-Canada command. Last week I heard NORTHCOM’s Commander — General Victor Renaut’s address at the Atlantic Council meeting. In his remarks and in the questions that followed he addressed the threat of cyber attacks.
The most important point of his remarks came when he stated the United States must move in “anticipation of the threat” rather than reacting to cyber attacks as we are today. Secondly, he acknowledged how difficult it is to determine whether an attack on a nation’s cyber infrastructure is an act of war. He went on to say: “We have not yet defined what that (referring an act of cyber war) is and he noted “That’s a policy decision that has to be made.”
This clearly articulated the need to develop a “Cyber Warfare Doctrine” that is used beyond the United States and agreed upon by the United Nations and NATO. Earlier this year I authored such a doctrine and was able to publish a redacted summary version in issue #56 of International Intelligence Magazine. An extended summary with sensitive security information can be viewed here.
As efforts continue to pull together all the pieces of President Bush’s classified cyber security program, (now estimated at $30 billion) the greatest challenges may be the multi-nation approach and the fact that the U.S. government and the high tech industry have to work together to address this growing threat. The tenets for cyber warfare must be developed and integrated into a flexible framework for decision making about this new method of warfare that military leaders have called the most significant threat of the 21st century.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
No offense intended, but Defense Tech would greatly increase their credibility in the cyberspace realm if there were reports from more than one person…make up a pen name or something.
David
I don’t follow you! This article has NO pen names. General Victor Renaut is real and Kevin Coleman is real. I guess you are just one of those people who like to bitch!
David
I wrote his piece and there are no pen names used in it. We user reference sources when available but in many cases when dealing with the government and secuirty people do not like to give their name out (for a number of reasons).
(Not the same David as below)
A couple of constructive comments:
1. The “top ten watch list” on pg. 5 seems odd without some further explanation. It appears to be based on some sort of product of capability X intent, but this is not explained. I would judge the capabilities of Russia, France, and Israel superior to Iran, but they are lower on the list, so I guess intent is factored in somehow. But even then, some countries on the list are just interested in garden-variety industrial spying while others are a lot more malicious.
2. The article would be improved by adding discussion of attacks on network infrastructure (DNS, BGP) vs. attacks on individual servers. Responses have to be very different in these two cases.
Thanks for the feedback. I would like to say there are another 17 pages of the report that I was not permitted to publish. As for Iran’s placement on the list of top ten, the intelligence and exploit examples used in the rating of capabilities, they ranked higher. That being said, with the fast pace development of cyber weapons, I believe the leader role changes perhaps weekly.
I don’t always agree with Kevin but this time I think he is right. Iran’s armed forces and technical universities have joined in an effort to create independent cyber R & D centers and train personnel in IT skills; and second, Tehran actively seeks to buy IT and military related technical assistance and training from both Russia and India.
Man haven’t anybody realized yet,that talk is empty….Its all hidden but isn’t!!!
You are stealing content aren’t ya?
Who gives a damn if you are a Gov worker!!!
Look at our times bukiy(wasteful)one…Pretty soon
they’ll send fighter pilots into combat with no
gattling guns again!