Cyber Applied Research
Abstract
As adversaries develop more sophisticated technology and tactics and become more skilled and better funded, the cyber S&T community must accelerate the pace of innovative research. Judiciously exploring research under these thrust areas should provide a distinct advantage in future cyber conflicts. Following a review and assessment of emerging joint operational needs, OUSD(R&E) developed four (4) research areas to enhance the DoD’s tactical edge in a rapidly evolving cyber domain (described below): • Behavioral Cyber Science: Exploring the interaction between computers and human behavior by moving beyond binary electronic signals towards understanding human behavior. New insights from behavioral science will increase the effectiveness of tools, increase the effectiveness of the cyber workforce, and improve the utility of cyber solutions. Behavioral cyber science seeks to uncover details about how humans (represented by 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 outcomes. • Self-Securing Systems: Prevailing in a contested cyber environment will require new sciences and mechanisms for autonomous cybersecurity to protect the increasingly complex weapon systems and platforms that help DoD operators react more quickly to cyber-attacks. Exploring foundational research in self-securing systems will arm future DoD systems with the capability to proactively, autonomously, and seamlessly assess cyber threats. Additionally, future systems will be able to deploy self-defense mechanisms to neutralize cyber-attacks and enable blue forces to maneuver at will. Autonomous cyber defenses will need to apply the most current advances in artificial intelligence research. • Precise Cyber Effects: Precision offensive campaigns for the cyber domain require accurate and timely predictions of cyber effects to enable DoD leadership to achieve the desired outcomes from cyber operations and help manage risks associated with collateral damage. Exploring methods to derive quantifiable metrics will help improve the precision control of selecting cyber mission targets and raise the accuracy of effects; achieving an understanding of second and third order of effects will provide commanders with a higher confidence of success and limit collateral damage. • Applied Mathematics for Cyber: Advancing mathematical foundations that are intrinsically linked to all branches of cyber science and technology, will cut across focus areas producing new methods to design, secure, and reason about complex cyber systems. This area of research will characterize the cyber domain, maintain the integrity of data, harden systems, analyze potential solutions, and counter adversarial machine learning. Advances in these cyber S&T areas will promote strong foundations, while disruptive innovations will create surprise, shape the fight, and ensure a decisive advantage. The research areas are critical to the development of innovative and sustainable research that takes cybersecurity beyond the incremental escalation of attack and defense.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Project
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2021
- Source ID
- 003_0602668D8Z_2_0400_PB_2021
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