[Free Book] Ten Strategies of a World-Class Cybersecurity Operations Center

Cyberthon 2015

ENLISTED CYBER MASTER'S DEGREE OPPORTUNITY AT NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

CTNs and ITs ... What an awesome opportunity!

Below, you will find a highlighted copy of the recent NAVADMIN (057/14) advertising a 12-month Master of Science in Applied Cyber Operations to CTNs and ITs, E6 or above.

Higher education is something our Information Dominance Corps (rightfully) pushes heavily.  We work in very technical fields that demand not only the brightest individuals, but also academics.  This is a good thing.  In this push to "increase the Navy's cyber capabilities, while building a professional cyber workforce," your Navy and cyber experience mixed with focused studies in a formal masters program at a quality school has the potential for great results, for the Navy and for you both professionally and personally.

The Officer ranks have been taking advantage of graduate education for some time and I am very excited to see the emphasis pushed to Chiefs and First Classes.

I hope all qualified and interested Sailors take advantage of this opportunity!

Last years selectees were announced in NAVADMIN 186/13 which you can find here.

IWBC Course Material

Course material from Information Warfare Basic Course (IWBC) is now posted online for your reference.  A link will be kept on our Resources page (among some other amazing resources as well).

In addition to the IWBC slides, the Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series (NEETS) modules have been posted there as well.

Link: http://www.pwlk.net/IWBC

References
Image: http://www.netc.navy.mil/centers/ceninfodom/corry/Reporting.aspx?ID=0

AIS Hacked

Several security researches teamed up to show how the Automatic Identification System (AIS) can be hacked.

NIST Cybersecurity Framework Draft - Not Ready For Primetime

When Executive Order 13636, “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity¹,” was released earlier this year, it called for the development of a cybersecurity framework.  The purpose, as expected given the myriad of news articles covering critical infrastructure cybersecurity, was to improve the cybersecurity posture of these organizations by giving them a voluntary framework that enables them to identify, assess, and manage cyber risk.  Fortunately, the “Preliminary Cybersecurity Framework²” is still in draft form, with the latest round of development workshops just completed in Dallas, TX, because it seems like the lessons that should have been learned by other similar frameworks have not yet made their way into the current discussion.

Tactical Communications Demand Adaptive Software

In a recent newsletter, The Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) published an article about research they are doing with the military, tactical communications, and agile computing . I'd like to share the newsletter and a few thoughts.

Can Complex Event Processing be used for Cyber Threat Analysis?

Can Complex Event Processing (CEP) be used for cyber threat analysis? It sure can.

Cyber Kill Chain: Hope or Hype?

Cyber Kill Chain: Hope or Hype?

The concept of a Cyber Kill Chain was adopted from the military kill chain concept, which describes the stages of an attack. As you might guess, a cyber kill chain does just that, but for cyber attacks. This post will discuss some of the practical issues you will need to consider if you want to implement your own cyber kill chain.

Help! I want to do Cyber but I don't have a technical degree

Do you need a technical degree in order to work in cyber security? Not really.

As a Navy Reserve Information Warfare Officer (IWO), I recently attended the 2-month long Information Warfare Basic Course (IWBC) at Corry Station, Pensacola Florida. The course aims to provide basic instruction to active duty and reserve IWO's in the all things IW. Cyber was one of the topics of instruction. Some of the officers in the course transfer from different Navy communities into IW. These folks tend to have a mix of technical and non-technical undergraduate degrees. Unless you have been living in a cave for the last several years, cyber is a really hot topic right now, both in the Department of Defense (DoD) and in the private sector. Naturally, some of the officers in class were concerned that their liberal arts degrees would keep them from participating in cyber operations. This is not necessarily the case, and I'd like to share my thoughts on how one can bolster their resume to be more attractive in this area. I believe my thoughts can be applied to both to the military and civilian worlds.

Proactive Decision Making

When leaders need to make decisions, as expected, they endeavor to make good ones.  Unfortunately, without good data at hand, decisions can end up being unintentionally bad.

One of the major tasks for leaders is to ask the right questions.  These questions should be the starting point for the generation of metrics that are required for coherent answers.  If the right questions aren’t being asked, or more likely, no questions at all, then any analyst will fall back to submit the data they have on hand.  This is a dangerous precedent to set because when leaders rely only on what data is already available, the existing data gathering will likely distract the leader from asking the right questions. 

Navy Cyber: The 5th Operational Domain

Apparently this "Cyberspace" thing is pretty cool, yeah?  It is the buzz all over the news feeds as well with the talking heads on TV.  Denial of Service this, SCADA that¹, First Amendment rights, Fourth Amendment rights², Internet kill switches³ (a little dated), etc...

Well not only is this a very dynamic topic in the news, it is also an extremely dynamic domain in which to operate.  Our Navy recognizes this and has Tenth Fleet tasked to support.