Sharing the Cyber Journey.

摘要

As the forces hunker down, the entire command and a global support structure hit afterburner in an attempt to determine (1) what happened to cause the loss of visual contact, (2) can it be recovered, and (3) will it be in time to achieve the intended mission? a situation with seemingly infinite causality, demanding action in finite moments. While the operations center staff check their equipment, computer maintainers in dozens of locations check for indicators of hardware or software system failure; civil engineers evaluate power, chillers, and HVAC systems operation; network operators across the globe search for dropped fiber connections; satellite operators work to verify communication and data feeds; spectrum analysts look for jamming indications; intelligence analysts dive into indications of potential adversary action; weather experts evaluate scintillation all while mission commanders check their watches. One operation, one mission, yet it requires a myriad of extraordinary experts each unique and each integral to an RPA operation that depends on well over a hundred individual commercial and military network connections, dozens of integrated hardware systems, miles of fiber-optic cable, significant satellite bandwidth, and millions of lines of software code. Welcome to the cyber domain: an environment of intellect, integration, and, for good as well as ill, complex interdependency. The scenario described above could affect equally any military weapon system or mission. In the vast majority of cases, these network dependencies are not well documented, the real-time status of network systems is not automated or transmitted, the supporting infrastructure is diverse and aging, the investigation remains essentially manual, and the fingers generally point to the distant end, located in the vicinity of Valhalla.