This past weekend I woke in the early morning around 4AM climbed on my motorcycle and rode from West Lafayette down to Evansville. On the border of Indiana and Kentucky I took a minor extension to my route and crossed…
Category: Technology
The term “technology” does not follow the same linguistic pattern as “biology” and “geology” because its etymology is different. While “biology” and “geology” are derived from Greek roots, with “bio” meaning life and “geo” meaning Earth, “technology” has Latin roots.
“Technology” comes from the combination of two Greek words: “techne,” meaning skill or art, and “logia,” meaning study or science. So, the term “technology” literally means the study or science of skills or arts. It reflects a broader concept that goes beyond the study of a specific substance (like life or the Earth) to encompass a wide range of human-made tools, systems, and techniques.
DARPA Plan X: Weapons without an operational art
What does DARPA hope to achieve with Plan X? On the outside it looks like they are looking for battlefield mapping or tools for situational awareness. It looks like they are looking for point and shoot weapons and techniques for…
Thinking about risk: Active defense
If we can agree… (e.g. Ryan and Ryan heuristic). Then most policy, mechanisms, and effort has in the past been at decreasing vulnerabilities. FISMA, IAVA’s, patches, etc. are all part of the mitigation of vulnerabilities. They are not countermeasures. This was…
The reasons a “cyber attack” is NOT going to happen
In a thought exercise we can look at why something isn’t going to happen regardless of how we feel about it. The idea is to raise up some of the concerns about a concept and evaluate it from differing viewpoints.…
Cyber legislation isn’t an answer to the real question
First you have to understand that information security simply is not a priority in American society. I think this is not a technical or ideological issue. It is a question of assumption of resources and risks. Using Gartners numbers you’re…
TIMN conceptual mapping
This is an early effort to start mapping the relationships of TIMN by David Ronfeldt. This is also my first attempt at crowd sourcing a solution to a problem. T+I+M+N relates to the concepts of how humans organize themselves. I…
Storage, transmission, and processing as basis for cyber forensics
We should call it cyber forensics rather than digital or computer forensics. Why? There are three states we find information in within the current technology paradigm; storage; transmission; or processing. Regardless of the mechanism of storage, transmission or processing a…
The hegemony of bureacracy
Hegemony – the political dominance of one state over another Bureaucracy – An unelected government organization that makes rules, laws, and policy What we have growing in the arena of cyber policy is a hegemonic bureaucracy filled with all of…
Turning out the lights on purpose
Watching the tensions of response and resiliency pulled and prodded by the concepts of conflict and conflagration you might be right to think nobody has a clue what would happen in a war where cyber is a large component. On…
Generations of cyber weapons
The discussion of the concept of cyber warfare weapons jumps between a few threads that make them harder to understand than really is needed. One of the conceptual problems is that there are types or generations of cyber weapons and…
The cyber force matrix
There has been a lot of ink spilled on the idea of nation-state activities in cyber space and much of that discussion has been centered on military activities in the domain. Though interesting this misses the concept that a nation…
Microsoft Surface: Usability and mobility and presentation of tech
I watched the Microsoft Surface introduction with interest. I thought that the idea of the tablet running a full operating system and functionally tied to mobility through the use case rather than relegated to mobility by design would be interesting.…
Different realities and the impacts on policy
Adam Elkus has a great piece on how cyber punk has killed cyber security. I strongly suggest that you read it if you have time. This is a great way to get into some of the interesting pieces of how…
When critical infrastructure is no longer a target then commodity infrastructure suffices
With the current list of critical infrastructures inclusive of electricity generation, telecommunication, water, transportation, and financial services you would think society has identified key risk points. I think that would be false. Though key resources are identified for each of…
Information assurance and security and cyber warfare is muskets in a sharks with lasers world
Freedberg writing “Military Debates Who Should Pull The Trigger For A Cyber Attack” Quotes General Cartwright (Ret) as saying “We’ve been thinking 90% defense, 10% offense. That’s bass-ackwards for us.” Later in the article Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of…