Cyberspace: The Ultimate Complex Adaptive System

Networks and information systems that are being constructed today are complicated. Integrating these networks together into a global Internet yields an extremely complicated environment. However, this cyber environment is beginning to exhibit traits of a complex adaptive system (CAS). It is the contention of the author that the cyber domain can be thought of as the ultimate complex adaptive system (e.g., the global Internet). Complex adaptive systems are those systems which have the additional important property of being adaptive—i.e., the structure and behavior of the system changes over time in a way which tends to increase its success. Within this complex cyber domain, two key aspects are discussed to illustrate that the cyber domain exhibits complex behaviors: 1) Cyber awareness (What? Where? When?), and 2) cyber understanding (Why? Who?). The cyber environment represents the interaction of complex events and how they relate to the mission being performed in the cyber domain namely: cyber stealth (operating as undetectable as possible); cyber terrain (traversing a series of networks and nodes); and, cyber path (traversing particular links and routers). Two future areas of research—knowledge awareness and understanding, and network science—are discussed as well as applicable technologies. 2 The International C2 Journal | Vol 4, No 2 Introduction At issue today is how to incorporate cyber operations into the Information Age’s net-centric warfare philosophy. It is no surprise that cyber operations have become co-equal with other operations in importance and criticality. In 2006, the secretary of the Air Force added a third arm to the Air Force mission: that of cyberspace. Given the growing importance of the role of cyberspace within the Air Force, a sound strategy for achieving reliable, survivable, assured, and continuous cyber operations has become paramount within the 21st century. In fact, cyber operations have the potential to become an influential power provided by the Air Force. Cyber operations can be thought of as the third leg of a command and control (C2) triad (air and space being the other two). By adding this third leg, fundamental methodologies such as effects based operations (EBO) can be greatly enhanced. The networks and information systems that are being constructed today are extremely complex. An adversary cyber attack against a network could have cascading and devastating effects on other portions of the information enterprise. To defend against a network wide attack, it is imperative that we know what is on our systems and their composition. We need to know what computers we have, what applications are running, what vulnerabilities exist and what networks are related to other networks. Only when armed with this type of information can we possibly adapt our countermeasures and protection procedures to counter an attack. When considering cyber operations, military time lines will have to be reduced by several orders of magnitude in order to be able to keep pace with operations being conducted within a global cyberspace environment. Time lines to conduct a military operation have significantly been reduced from weeks-months to minutes-seconds. For example, in the mid-1990s, the then Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Jumper embarked on the goal of performing sensorto-shooter operations in single-digit-minutes. This was no easy task. The PHISTER | Cyberspace: The Ultimate Complex Adaptive System 3 inter-relationships of data, information, awareness, understanding, and decision making along with the corresponding actions is quite complex. Imagine, conducting a sensor-to-shooter operation starting when a sensor detects a target (t0) and ending when the target is neutralized (tn), all occurring within single-digit-minutes or a maximum of 599-seconds. Since multiple entities1 are involved, there are different time lines for each entity; thus to achieve shared awareness or shared understanding one has to wait for the slowest entity. Now consider 2009, where sensor-to-shooter in the cyber domain needs to be conducted in milliseconds-to-seconds-to-minutes. These are the fundamental issues when dealing with the network centric warfare construct. What is Cyberspace? DoD Definition (DoD Memorandum 2008) (RAND 2010, 3): Cyberspace, taken as a whole is extremely complex and encompasses numerous elements as shown in Figure 1. 1. An entity can be an individual, a team, an organization, or a software algorithm, depending on the application. 4 The International C2 Journal | Vol 4, No 2 Figure 1. Elements of Cyberspace (AF Cyberspace Task Force 2007) Cyberspace in the Context of Net-Centric Operations Figure 2. Net-Centric Operations Within Cyberspace (Alberts 2002, 146)2 2. ROE = Rules of Engagement, Red = Adversary, Blue = US/Allied, White = Neutrals, Gray = Unknown. PHISTER | Cyberspace: The Ultimate Complex Adaptive System 5 Describing cyber C2 within a net-centric operations viewpoint is exactly as describing air C2 or space C2. Using Figure 2 as the backdrop, one can describe the various portions of net-centric warfare within a cyberspace context as follows: