Research Summaries

Back Cyber Warfighting System for Resilience and Response

Fiscal Year 2021
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department NPS Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Jasper, Scott E.
Sponsor Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (Navy)
Summary The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) has performed research with industry on understanding multiple aspects of resilience and response. The research lead to the creation of an automated cyber defense use case to demonstrate the technical feasibility of emerging commercial capabilities in a difficult scenario. The results of the demo form the basis of what can be called a Cyber Warfighting System (CWS) sponsored by Commander, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command / U.S. TENTH Fleet with collaboration by the Deputy Commandant for Information, Headquarters Marine Corps. The CWS protects the endpoint, pushes unknown files to the cloud for detonation, and then reinforces the network firewall with newly generated signatures, closing zero-day vulnerabilities in minutes. The operational aspects of the CWS are the ability to 1. Sight and declare the threat and 2. Set appropriate resilience and readiness postures then respond. The intent of the CWS project is to inform the INOCCS Framework design by leveraging the NPS Cybersecurity Operations Center to study and analyze CWS resilience and response against real world threats, in lab environments that simulate the loss or degradation of internet connectivity. The project will study the ability of cloud-centric cyber defense capabilities, especially for machine learning and behavioral analytics, to sight and declare APT tactics and techniques. The project will analyze alternative architectures, dataflows, and workflows for cyber defense of intermittently connected afloat platforms. Other commands have been invited to participate in the CWS project, particularly the Navy Information Warfare Command Pacific (NIWC Pacific) and the Office for Naval Research (ONR). Other programs will be consulted on the CWS project, especially SHARKCAGE, Navy Cyber Situational Awareness (NCSA), and Bloodhound. The primary deliverables are recommendations to Commander, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command / U.S. TENTH Fleet, OPNAV N2N6FX1 and Deputy Commandant for Information, Headquarters Marine Corps on how to construct, test, and evaluate the Cyber Warfighting System for ships underway or marines in the field.
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Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal