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DOE Cybersecurity Grassroots Roundtable: Scientific Evaluation Ingredients for Presentation to DOE/Laboratory Management. Jackson Mayo February 24, 2010. What is the cyber problem?. Cybersecurity is currently a practice, not a science
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DOE Cybersecurity Grassroots Roundtable: Scientific EvaluationIngredients for Presentation toDOE/Laboratory Management Jackson Mayo February 24, 2010
What is the cyber problem? • Cybersecurity is currently a practice, not a science • National cyber funding is overwhelmingly operational; little fundamental understanding • That’s why we keep failing • Despite huge effort, we’re stuck playing catch-up with cyber threats • Let’s make it a science and start succeeding • As in other fields, scientific foundations will ultimately transform our capabilities
How does the cyber problemimpact DOE? • DOE has critical information to protect • DoD/Intel Community have inaccessible (classified) cybersecurity infrastructure • NSF performs long-term theoretical (unclassified) research • DOE needs to fill this gap to protect sensitive unclassified information and critical power & nuclear infrastructure
Why science? • Why is a scientific approach needed to solve this problem? • Current approaches are reactive, and don’t address the larger problem • Breaches in information security reveal an underlying gap in understanding • Technology is evolving so quickly that without a fundamental understanding, we will never get ahead of the threat
Why science? • Current reactive approaches • Drain unpredictable amounts of resources • Result in decisions made based on potential dead-end (incomplete) approaches • Identify only “circumstantial” truths rather than the intrinsic truths
Why science: Why DOE? • DOE is the nationally acknowledged leading expert in modeling & simulation • National benefit if DOE can use scientific methods, similar to those used to confirm the reliability of the nuclear stockpile (UQ/V&V), to make confident assertions about the cyber environment to national leaders
National cyber research portfolio should be diversified • Short-term: Necessary operational response to current threats • Medium-term: Scientific concepts to design and evaluate critical cyber infrastructure • Power grid (can be extended other critical national infrastructure such as water, etc.) • All things nuclear • Long-term: Principled understanding of complex cyber systems in general
Tasks that DOE can accomplish • Define scope of this new science • Develop needed vocabulary • Explore the range of scientific modes (theory to experiment) for use in cybersecurity • Develop appropriate measurement tools • Develop cyber-specific epistemology, axioms, etc. • Develop framework for consistent design of cyber experiments
Recap of three questions • 1. What can the community provide? • Scientific expertise in variety of disciplines to develop “science of cybersecurity” • 2. How can the community benefit? • Greater credibility and confidence in analyses • 3. Relevance to DOE Mission • Protect critical nuclear and power grid infrastructure • Provide assurance against future information security breaches