Proactive Self Defense in Cyberspace

The most prevalent form of warfare in the 21st Century will occur in cyberspace. Cyberwarfare can take on many forms and levels of volatility and the persistent environment of cyberwarfare will force network and systems security specialists to continue improving upon their tools of the trade. Most of these tools are reactive in nature. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and other government agencies need to develop a blend of reactive and proactive tools and standards to properly secure and defend the Global Information Grid (GIG) from cyber attacks. This paper will discuss the strategic requirements for enacting a proactive self-defense mechanism in cyberspace. It starts by providing a background on the cyber issues, vulnerabilities, and threats that face us today. Then it discusses the future cyber threats and how a proactive cyber defense will combat these threats. Supporting technologies like modeling and simulation and the Disruption Tolerant Network (DTN) are addressed as well. The paper then concludes with strategic recommendations for establishing a proactive self-defense in cyberspace to properly secure the GIG while maintaining superiority in the cyber domain.