Cyber Security Situational Awareness tools on Defense Platform Networks are critical for Cyber Warfare

Cyberspace is understood as the fifth domain of warfare equally critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space. Success of military operations in the physical domains is increasingly dependent on the availability of, and access to, cyberspace. The armed forces are reliant on cyberspace both as a user and as a domain to achieve defence and security missions. Modern defense platforms are at increasing risk of cyber-attack from sophisticated adversaries. These platforms do not currently provide the situational awareness necessary to identify when they are under cyber-attack, nor to detect that a constituent subsystem may be in a compromised state.

Our growing dependency on cyberspace has greatly increased the need for situation awareness—essentially, understanding your environment and accurately predicting and responding to potential problems that might occur. The systems and networks that operate in cyberspace have vulnerabilities that present significant risks to both individual organizations and national security. By anticipating what might happen to these systems, leaders can develop effective countermeasures to protect their critical missions.

Effective command and control requires a fundamental awareness of what’s occurring across the affected domain. With this awareness, negative situations can be recognized and managed as they occur. The concepts for doing this are rapidly evolving, and many U.S. government organizations are working to establish disciplined processes, enabling technologies, and management organization

EDA’s Cyber Situation Awareness Package (CySAP) project aims to integrate a group of technologies into a single platform to provide situation perception, understanding and future projection. It will provide military commanders with a cyber decision-support analysis tool to manage risks and cyber threats during the planning and execution phases of an operation. It will also enable headquarters’ staff to better visualise and interpret the threat landscape, as presented by the Security Operation Centre (SOC).