Please click on the links below to learn more:

• Masterclass A: Intelligence Gathering From the World Wide Web: The Internet as Both Weapon and Battlefield
• Masterclass B: Threat Scenarios Facing Military, Industrial and Government Entities and Analysis of Mitigation Strategies, Defence and Counter-Offensive Operations

Post-Conference Cyber Warfare Master Class Day: 30th January 2009

10.00 - 13:00 Masterclass A: Intelligence Gathering From the World Wide Web: The Internet as Both Weapon and Battlefield

The internet is crucial to the daily operations of the radical groups making up the global jihad. The very openness and accessibility of this medium provides the intelligence community with a wealth of material for foundation intelligence, counter-intelligence, and information operations.

Among the lessons we can learn are

• Strategy What are their ultimate goals and overall game plan? How do they define success?
• Tactics What methods do they propose to reach these goals? What are their assumptions as to the effectiveness of these methods?
• Ideology What worries them? Where do they see themselves as vulnerable?
• PsyOps & Recruitment The languages and focus of terrorist websites tell us who their targets for recruitment are and how to reach this target audience.
• Information Operations The openness of the medium provides opportunities for counter-terrorism “grey ops”—disinformation, the sowing of dissension, and other unsavoury activities.

Conclusions

Today’s battles are being fought more and more in the public domain rather than on the battlefield. In this type of warfare, the Internet is both battlefield and weapon. For the jihadis, this is a two-edged sword; the greater their dependence on the Internet, the greater their reach and efficiency, but also the greater their vulnerability. The counter-terrorism community can make use of the same tactics and the same venue as those used by the jihad movement itself, in order to undermine the movement’s effectiveness and reach.

Led by:

Yael Shahar
Director, Database Project Institute for Counter-Terrorism
IDC Herzliya

13.30 - 16:30 Masterclass B: Threat Scenarios Facing Military, Industrial and Government Entities and Analysis of Mitigation Strategies, Defence and Counter-Offensive Operations

During the course of this 3 hour workshop, Colonel Zimmerman will outline the studies of the Cyber Space Task Force regarding the threats to security to key infrastructures in both military and civilian entities. The following workshop comprises the core of discussion which can easily cover a week long course but typically allows for vigorous discussion at a strategic level or very granular analysis at the tactical level.

Take away the strategies that ensure your Information Infrastructure remains as secure as possible with analysis of lessons learned from both policy and operational improvements.

Threat Scenarios Facing Military, Industrial and Government Entities

• Open network systems
• Closed network systems
• External/internal attacks
• Guided media vulnerabilities and attack vectors
• Radiated media vulnerabilities and attack vectors
  • ‘n’th order effects of attacks
  • Functional impacts
  • Perceptional impacts
  • Unforeseen linkages to other agencies and related impacts

Mitigation Strategies, Defence and Counter- Offensive Operations

• Proactive defence including;
  • Adaptive policies
  • Robust, resilient, redundant designs
    • Organizational factors
    • Software and hardware design implications
    • Topological
• Operational security and information assurance and relationship with Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and policy decisions
  • Training
  • weakest link analysis and mitigation
  • Auditing, review/feedback/integration of lessons lear

Led by:

Colonel Glenn Zimmerman
Cyber Space Task Force
US DoD