International Workshop: Research & Education for the Cyber Storm 18-20 February 2019

Research Papers from scholars in the U.S. Army Cyber Institute, NATO  Cyber Center, Oxford University, U.S. Special Forces University, Ukraine, Canada, Black Horse Inc., and UNSW.

UNSW Canberra Cyber, Australia’s premier centre for the interdisciplinary study of cyber security and the campus Research Group on Cyber War and Peace, will convene an international conference in February 2019 on the “Cyber Storm.” Australia’s former Minister of Cyber Security, Hon. Dan Tehan, warned in November 2016, of the need for the country to prepare for a cyber storm, even if it was an unlikely contingency. One view of the Cyber Storm sees it as the contingencies arising from protracted and complex, multi-vector, multi-wave, multi-theatre attacks against cyber assets. Such assets can include critical civil infrastructure, military C4ISTAR, computerised systems in weapons platforms, and even other civilian targets of military or national security significance. This conference will tease out scholarly approaches to characterising complex cyber crises (such as the "cyber storm"). A related interest of the conference will be to look at the role universities and professional education institutions, such as military colleges, can play to address the unique challenges of workforce formation for the Cyber Storm.

For middle powers like Australia, the research foundations on which policy responses to the "cyber storm" depend are very weakly developed, or even non-existent. This is especially the case in the sub-field of simulations. The conventional wisdom, or at least the dominant practice, has been that the knowledge, skills and abilities needed would be acquired “on the job” in highly classified environments. There has been little space for open-source research and therefore minimal open-source education and teaching. This scholarly conference will discuss research papers on these subjects by leading specialists from universities, professional colleges, think tanks, government, and industry.

The call for papers is now closed. Papers accepted are listed below:

Mind the gap: Western military adaptation to cyber versus Western theory of victory

Lior Tabansky, Blavatnik Cyber Security Interdisciplinary Research Center, Tel Aviv

Defending a Nation in Cyberspace

Lauri Lindström, NATO Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security

One Storm or Many? Cyber Arsenals for Sustained Multi-theatre Cyber Physical Attacks

Greg Austin, UNSW Canberra Cyber

Dezinformatsiya: You’re Already Inside a Cyber Storm

Chris Dufour and Tim Newberry, BlackHorse Solutions, Inc. (USA)

Weaponizing Information Systems for Political Disruption

Kevin Desouza, Professor of Business, Technology and Strategy, QUT

Technologies for Multimedia Communications in the Cyber Storm

Dr Aleksander Kiselevsky, Member of Supervisory Board and Chief Scientific Advisor, and Dr Michael Ryzhukhin, CTO/CSO, both at Intecracy Group, Kyiv

Alliance attribution of global cyber attacks

Siim Alatalu, Strategy Branch, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence | Tallinn, Estonia

Developments in State Level Cyber Wargaming

John Curry, Bath Spa University, UK

Preparing for the Storm - Wargaming Cyber Risks

Lt Col David Ormrod Ph D, Australian Army

Do Cyber War Simulations Improve Decision Making?

Tom Sear, UNSW Canberra, and Dr Paul Lieber, Joint Special Operations University, McDill AFB, Florida

Simulation in support of Cyber Education and Exercises

Sylvain Leblanc, Interim Chair for Cybersecurity & Associate Professor, and Taylor Perkins, RMC Canada

Design It, Build It, Defend It – Using Cyber Exercises in the Education of Cyber Forces

G. Scott Knight, Chair for Cybersecurity, and Sylvain Leblanc, RMC Canada

Enhance Joint Military Education with AI-Based Learning Systems

Jim Q. Chen, Professor of Cyber Studies, National Defense University (NDU), Washington DC

Whole of Nation Effort for Cyber Workforce Development in the United States

Prof Mike Klipstein, and Prof Edward Sobiesk, U.S. Army Cyber Institute

Educating Leaders Fit for the Cyber Storm

Dr Daria Daniels Skodnik, Advisory Board, Canada Research Centre 4^th Industrial Revolution

Tackling the cyber-skills gap for the Cyber Storm: a survey of UK initiatives

Jantje Silomon, and Monica Kaminska, University of Oxford

Education for Cyber Disaster Response and Resilience

Adam P. Henry, Adjunct, UNSW Canberra Cyber

**********************************************

Following the one-day research conference (on 18 Feb and open to the public), the convenors will host a one-day policy workshop (19 Feb), and a one-day table top exercise (20 Feb). Participation in the last two events is by invitation only. Please contact Professor Greg Austin for further details. Registration for 18 February event will be opened in late October 2018.