Cyber Applied Research
Abstract
The Cyber Applied Research program was initiated in FY 2011 to address specific technical problems that were not being fully addressed by the Services’ and the National Security Agency's existing Cyber science and technology (S&T) investments. Recently, S&T gaps were enumerated and described in several studies, including the 2015 DoD Cyber Strategy, the 2016 Commission Enhancing National Cybersecurity, and the 2017 Defense Science Board Research Enterprise Assessment. The Cyber Applied Research program builds upon existing basic and applied research results. Over the past several years, the program expanded research in cyber capabilities to provide Warfighters and commanders with tools and technologies to enable cyber situational awareness, cyber command-and-control, cyber operations, and protection of tactical networks, weapons systems and platforms. From FY 2011 to FY 2017, the program explored a number of technical thrusts that included: • Foundations of Trust: Developing known degrees of assurance that devices, networks, and cyber-dependent functions perform as expected, despite attack or error. • Resilient Infrastructure: Exploring technologies that not only withstand, but react to cyber attacks, and sustain or recover critical functions. • Assuring Effective Missions: Developing technologies that assess and control the cyber situation in mission context while staging, conducting, and monitoring cyber responses. • Cyber Modeling, Simulation & Experimentation: Simulating environments in which the Department operates and enables a more robust assessment and validation of the cyber technology development. • Embedded, Mobile & Tactical Environments: Exploring cyber systems that rely on technologies beyond wired networking and standard computing platforms. As adversaries develop more sophisticated technology tactics and become more skilled and better funded, the Cyber S&T Community must remain agile, vigilant, and evermore creative in response. Starting in late FY 2016, the Department reviewed the emerging needs of the joint operational community, new cyber threats, and the evolution DoD technology needs to focus the program on the changing cyber environment and missions. To bolster this program and address future threats, a new strategic vision was developed to enhance the DoD’s tactical edge in the rapidly evolving cyber domain where many aspects still remain unexplored. Seedling projects under the new research areas were initiated in late FY 2017. Judiciously investigating aspects of this research in thrusts areas identified below will provide a distinct advantage in future cyber conflicts: • Behavioral Cyber Sciences: Exploring the interaction between computers and human behavior by moving beyond signals (ones and zeroes) towards understanding human behavior. New insights from behavioral sciences will increase the effectiveness of tools, the cyber workforce, and improve the utility of cyber solutions. Behavioral cyber sciences seeks to uncover details about how humans (to include operators, users, adversaries, and/or defenders) react to cyber actions and how those reactions can be understood from a behavioral science standpoint and leveraged to create more effective actions and outcome. • Self-securing weapons, systems, and networks: Prevailing in a contested cyber environment will require new sciences and mechanisms for autonomous cybersecurity to keep pace with the growing complexity of weapon systems and help the DoD operators react more quickly to cyber-attacks. Autonomous cyber defenses will need to apply the recent advances in artificial intelligence research. • Foundations of precision cyber operations: Precision bombing campaigns for the cyber domain require accurate and timely predictions of cyber effects to enable DoD leadership to achieve the desired effects of cyber operations and help manage risks associated with collateral damage. • Mathematical Foundations of Cyber Security: Advancing mathematical foundations of cyber S&T will cut across focus areas and produce new methods to design, secure, and reason about complex cyber systems. Advances in these new cyber S&T focus thrust areas will help to promote strong foundations and disruptive innovations that will create surprises, shape the fight, and ensure a decisive advantage. The research areas will be critical to the development of innovative and sustainable research that takes cyber security beyond the incremental escalation of attack and defense.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Project
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2019
- Source ID
- 003_0602668D8Z_2_0400_PB_2019
Related Documents
- Root: Cyber Security Research
- Child Accomplishment: Foundations of Trust
- Child Accomplishment: Resilient Infrastructure
- Child Accomplishment: Assuring Effective Missions
- Child Accomplishment: Cyber Modeling, Simulation & Experimentation (MSE)
- Child Accomplishment: Embedded, Mobile & Tactical Environments (EMT)
- Child Accomplishment: Behavioral Cyber Sciences
- Child Accomplishment: Self-securing Weapons, Systems, and Networks
- Child Accomplishment: Foundations of Precision Cyber Operations
- Child Accomplishment: Mathematical Foundations of Cyber Security