Potential Paper Topics for 2015 Conferences
With suggested conferences - sessions and authors
(Many suggested authors have not been contacted yet.)
Click on Title to Read Abstract Draft
Small Unit Training Environments for Cyber Warfare
ABSTRACT
The recently developed Cyber Quick-Reaction Training Environment (CQRTE) provides a useful training opportunity for small units, enabling them to better meet the growing threats of cyber warfare. This paper details the conception, design, implementation, and testing of the new CQRTE approach. The inception of the program was driven by the immediate and well-publicized threats to the nation’s security in the form of cyber attacks and by the less well-recognized dearth of inexpensive and easily accessed training opportunities to practice defensive responses to cyber attacks. While there have been very large exercises, such as Cyber Flag and Cyber Guard, they are of a scale and organizational magnitude to preclude small unit training on a regular basis. The expansion of open source tools and the enhancement of hardware services, such as High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) configurations have provided cost-effective and adaptive solutions that are not only desirable, they are easily implemented and sustainable..
This paper will specificity set forth how we employed HPCC to stand up a low-cost fully operable cyberspace exercise environment to enhance training. The basis for the concept will be discussed at length and the design phase described with attention to training goals that are currently un-met and how CQRTE can meet them, all within the budget and personnel constraints of small units. Then the implementation phase will be described, with the parameters for operations being emphasized more than the specific way that those parameters were met in the instantiation that was used as a proof-of-concept. The test exercise will be described, listing planning, staffing, preparation, tools and implementation. The impact of the exercise will be reported, especially the impact on training, readiness and morale. Finally, the paper will advance a set of conclusion, plans for future training and need for additional research.
Simulations Supportable by Small Units:
Cyber Quick-Reaction Training Environment
ABSTRACT
The Cyber Quick-Reaction Training Environment (CQRTE) approach addresses the need for small units to have a supportable capability to simulate cyber warfare environments on their own and in keeping with their individual training schedules. The threats for cyber attack are growing and our reliance on our networked assets is now both vital to the nation and vulnerable to outside attack. Large simulations both in the kinetic world, like JFCOM’s Urban Resolve, and in the cyber world, like Cyber Guard, are costly, schedule-constrained and not easily tailored to a small units training requirements. Fortunately, network interconnectivity and incredible increases in local computing power give even small units the capability to create and use simulation as never before. The use of small-unit defensive tactics can return the symmetry to the conflict as they meet the challenges from similarly small groups of cyber-foes. The authors have a deep history of participation in various types and levels of simulation and have concomitant experience in small military unit command and control. They will analyze, describe and report on their creation of a simulation methodology that can be emulated and modified to fit units of a range of sizes.
This paper focuses on how commonly available computing assets were used to create a prototype CQRTE. They will discuss the differences and similarities between that effort and the kinetic simulations. They will further lay out the differences and similarities in this research and that conducted on large (>1K CPU Linux Clusters) High Performance Computers. Hardware requirements, communications capabilities, software selection, and programming experience will all be related. How parameters for these issues were set and how they impacted the implementation will be covered. The paper will close with an analysis of the utility of this approach, its extensibility into other areas, and future research requirements and plans.
Federating Small Unit Cyberwarfare Simulations:
Conception, Requirements, Planning and Execution
ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on the need for federation of unit scale cyber warfare simulations like the Cyber Quick-Reaction Training Environment (CQRTE). In order to bridge CQRTE into the larger picture that enables it to tie in with other cyber exercises, somewhat like a federated node, there are a number of challenging steps. The authors relate the analysis of the need for both local and ferreted training. This will provide federated, joint exercises that can simply connect up to each other without the intolerable costs of configuration cost and travel, etc. The national situation and needs are carefully documented and the new approach is based on early experience with CQRTE. The authors posit that if all the cyber units in the nation were to an instantiation of CQRTE, they could then just plug-in and join an on-going exercise. Such an exercise would be up and running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
The authors consider requirements, security, costs, communications and command issues, and other factors. They discuss their experience with Continentally distributed large-scale simulations for the Joint Experimentation group at the US Joint Forces Command and incorporate their lessons learned from that activity. Based on that experience, the authors cover the necessity for scalable collection, archiving and accessing data from the activities. They address the need for constructive simulated "players" to support single unit or even single player activity when no one else is on-line. The visualization specialists on the team discuss optimal visualization of the data and the simulation operation using real-time scoreboards. They present their vision of the impact that this will have on cyber warfare training and preparedness. They conclude with an analysis of future research and planning.