The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Exploratory Team meeting, "Model-Driven Paradigms for Integrated Approaches to Cyber Defense," was organized by the NATO Science and Technology Organization's (STO) Information Systems and Technology (IST) panel and conducted its meetings and electronic exchanges during 2016. This report describes the proceedings and outcomes of the team's efforts. Many of the defensive activities in the fields of cyber warfare and information assurance rely on essentially ad hoc techniques. The cyber community recognizes that comprehensive, systematic, principle-based modeling and simulation are more likely to produce long-term, lasting, reusable approaches to defensive cyber operations. A model-driven paradigm is predicated on creation and validation of mechanisms of modeling the organization whose mission is subject to assessment, the mission (or missions) itself, and the cyber-vulnerable systems that support the mission. This by any definition is a complex socio-technical system (of systems), and the level of detail of this class of problems ranges from the level of host and network events to the systems' functions up to the function of the enterprise. Solving this class of problems is of medium to high difficulty and can draw in part on advances in Systems Engineering (SE). Such model-based approaches and analysis could be used to explore multiple alternative mitigation and work-around strategies and to select the optimal course of mitigating actions. Furthermore, the model-driven paradigm applied to cyber operations is likely to benefit traditional disciplines of cyber defense such as security, vulnerability analysis, intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, analysis, forensics, attribution, and recovery.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Exploratory Team meeting, "Model-Driven Paradigms for Integrated Approaches to Cyber Defense", was organized by the NATO Science and Technology Organizations' (STOs') Information Systems and Technology (IST) panel and conducted its meetings and electronic exchanges during 2016. This report describes the proceedings and outcomes of the team's efforts.
Many of the defensive activities in the fields of cyber warfare and information assurance rely on essentially ad hoc techniques. The cyber community recognizes that comprehensive, systematic, principle-based modeling and simulation are more likely to produce long-term, lasting, reusable approaches to defensive cyber operations.
A model-driven paradigm is predicated on creation and validation of mechanisms of modeling the organization whose mission is subject to assessment, the mission (or missions) itself, and the cyber-vulnerable systems that support the mission. This by any definition is a complex socio-technical system (of systems), and the level of detail of this class of problems ranges from the level of host and network events to the systems’ functions up to the function of the enterprise/business. Solving this class of problems is of medium to high difficulty and can draw in part on advances in Systems Engineering (SE). Such model-based approaches and analysis could be used to explore multiple alternative mitigation and work-around strategies and to select the optimal course of mitigating actions. Furthermore, the model-driven paradigm applied to cyber operations is likely to benefit traditional disciplines of cyber defense such as security, vulnerability analysis, intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, analysis, forensics, attribution, and recovery.
The team identified a number of challenges for model-driven paradigms for cyber defense and elected to review 2 of them in detail: the problems of modeling the adversarial aspects, including wargaming, of cyber warfare and modeling human cognitive processes in relation to cyber activities.
• Stress the need for modeling and simulation for full range of cyber specialties, not only for training and rehearsal.
• Encourage participation of commercial companies, in NATO STO activities and meetings, with an option to demonstrate their relevant products. viii • Simulation models that we call here “Business Impact Simulation” are particularly important for NATO, but simulation models we call here “Attack Details Simulation” are crucial for NATO.
• Produce a set of clear and concrete requirements for modeling and simulation (M&S) tools specifically targeted at cyber defense and leveraging advances in SE.
• Simulation of attack-defense scenarios at a level of observable, componentnetwork-and-system-level events.
• Minimize government investments in the line of approaches based on attack graphs and related methods to invest in other directions of cyber (M&S).
• Encourage academic research targeted at effective and validated M&S of human cognitive processes and behaviors as they execute cyber defense and attack.
The team initiated publication of a special issue of the Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation dedicated specifically to model-driven paradigms for cyber defense. It also formulated a Technical Activity Proposal and obtained NATO IST approval for a workshop titled “Modelling and Simulation S&T: Critical Enabler for Cyber Defence”, details of which appear in Appendix A.
This report describes the proceedings and outcomes of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Exploratory Team meeting, “Model-Driven Paradigms for Integrated Approaches to Cyber Defense” (IST-ET-094), organized by the NATO Science and Technology Organizations’ (STOs’) Information Systems and Technology (IST) panel. Two meetings for IST-ET-094 were held: an inaugural workshop at the University of Lübeck in Lübeck, Germany, 14-18 March 2016, and the final meeting at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels, Belgium, 12-14 September 2016. The STO’s mission is to help position the NATO nations’ and NATO’s science and technology (S&T) investments as a strategic enabler of the knowledge and technology advantage for the defense and security posture of NATO nations and partner nations. This is accomplished by conducting and promoting S&T activities that augment and leverage the capabilities and programs of the alliance, of the NATO nations, and the partner nations, in support of NATO’s objectives. It is further accomplished by contributing to NATO’s ability to enable and influence security and defense-related capability development and threat mitigation in NATO nations and partner nations, in accordance with NATO policies, and by supporting decision making in the NATO nations and NATO.
IST, the immediate sponsor of this workshop, is one of the 5 NATO S&T panels whose role it is, with the NATO modeling and simulation (M&S) Group, to implement, on behalf of the S&T Board, the STO missio
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