The rapid advance­ment of cyber attacks and the emer­gence of cyber war­fare have caught gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary lead­ers around the world off guard. Decision mak­ing in time requir­ing defen­sive mea­sures or mil­i­tary cri­sis is guided by doc­trine and rules of engage­ment, but in the case of cyber attacks and cyber war­fare they do not cur­rently exist. The com­plex­i­ties and unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of cyber war­fare man­date estab­lish­ing Cyber Attack and Warfare Rules of Engagement (CAWRoE). 

Cyber war­fare is dif­fer­ent than the con­ven­tional war in many ways. It is this dif­fer­ence that will chal­lenge the minds of experts around the world when they attempt to cre­ate cyber war­fare doc­trine and ROE. To frame this dis­cus­sion, below you will find two def­i­n­i­tions that put this chal­lenge in context. 

Definition — Cyber Warfare & Terrorism — “The pre­med­i­tated use of dis­rup­tive activ­i­ties, or the threat thereof, against com­put­ers and/​or net­works, with the inten­tion to cause harm or fur­ther social, ide­o­log­i­cal, reli­gious, polit­i­cal or sim­i­lar objec­tives. Or to intim­i­date any per­son in fur­ther­ance of such objec­tives.” Source: This def­i­n­i­tion was pub­lished in the U.S. Army Cyber Operations and Cyber Terrorism Handbook 1.02. This def­i­n­i­tion was writ­ten by Kevin Coleman back in 2004 for an online article. 

Definition — Rules of Engagement — Rules of engage­ment date at least to the Middle Ages in Europe. In mil­i­tary terms this refers to a direc­tive issued by a mil­i­tary author­ity con­trol­ling the use and degree of force, esp. spec­i­fy­ing cir­cum­stances and lim­i­ta­tions for engag­ing in com­bat. The direc­tive delin­eates the lim­i­ta­tions and cir­cum­stances under which forces will ini­ti­ate and pros­e­cute com­bat engage­ment with other forces encoun­tered. Source: This def­i­n­i­tion is based on mul­ti­ple author­i­ties’ sources and com­bined to clearly artic­u­late ROE. 

NOTE– After months of research, we will soon pub­lish a paper that addresses the ques­tion: “What con­sti­tutes an act of cyber war?“ 

History has shown that ROE are often over con­trolled and reg­u­lated by politi­cians and mil­i­tary lead­ers. It is antic­i­pated that this will also be the case as it relates to cyber attacks and war­fare. In addi­tion, com­man­ders and gov­ern­ment lead­ers at all lev­els must under­stand the sit­u­a­tion, com­plex­i­ties and uncer­tainty they face.

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