Military Communications and Information Technology: A Trusted ...

418 Military Communications and Information Technology...
tary domain, as well as analyzing such information. Such methodology
should cover following aspects: gathering an information / data; structuring,
analysis (filtering, finding the correlations, etc.) and building the new
knowledge (rules)
• challenging definition of realistic scenario that could show impact of cyber
security issues on training, in the area of asymmetric threats.
Unavailability of above mentioned items could limit the benefits of using
the ATHENA Cyber Tool in the context of:
• identification of networks’ and systems’ threats,
• training, including an identification of given network topology vulnerabilities,
• decision support capabilities.
III. Cyber threats in military missions
One must realize the fact that security is indivisible. With respect to e.g.
network centric warfare concept it is sometimes said that the cumulative impact
of new relationships among war fighting organizations (due to existence of new
network connections) is the source of increased combat power as suggested in [1].
In situations where people lives and health are threatened (military missions fall
into this group) this assumption is significant. Identification of incidents/events,
which can cause disruption or termination of military mission is one of the key
problems in present military asymmetric conflicts. The new NATO Cyber Defense
Policy, treats cyber security with a high priority [2]. It is related to known,
but still unsolved problems in acquiring, collecting and exploiting factual data
in cyber defense domain, including effective usage of sensors (both people and
specialized devices).
There is a great amount of well known (and unknown) groups of incidents,
which may lead to a disruption and/or prevent military mission from completion.
Appearance of such an incident during execution of a military mission may lead to
severe consequences (ultimately losses of people’s life or health). Thus the ultimate
goal of collecting information about incidents in cyberspace is achieving increased
level of cyber security, which in turn takes effect in an increase of military security.
It is of key importance to consider the following set of information:
1. Identification of information sources.
2. Definition of the means used for data collection.
3. Preparation of the information gathering method.
4. Preparation of the concept for storing information about incidents.
The points 1-4 above provide a fundament for the stage of collecting factual
data about incidents in cyberspace. Elementary goals of military missions can be
achieved in many ways. While defining this process we should focus on: