SBIR-STTR Award

Through constant cyber attacks targeting our information infrastructure, our country faces a growing threat from nefarious groups and individuals intent on disrupting and destroying our infrastructure and way of life and acquiring military intelligence and intellectual property. Current methods used by the Air Force to defend against these attacks and protect the assets of its information networks typically focus only on ensuring that the information is transmitted successfully, not on the success of the mission. A need exists to change this cyber defense paradigm from information assurance (ensuring the successful transmission of information) to mission assurance (ensuring the attainment of mission objectives). Military missions and their supporting components and activities must be compared on an equal basis and prioritized according to their criticality in ensuring mission success. 21CT is proposing the Network Prioritization Analysis Capability (NetPAC), a system dynamics modeling approach to represent the activity network used to accomplish Air Force missions. The model will consist of the key activities and interactions needed to satisfy the military objectives and will give military planners a capability to analyze these activities and determine their priorities to determine the effects of disrupting a particular activity on one or more military missions.

Benefit:
If developed and implemented according to plan, NetPAC will be able to provide an invaluable capability to Air Force cyber security analysts and mission planners in identifying network components and activities that must be given higher priority prior to or during the execution of a mission. The analysts and planners will be able to run the model using a set of scenarios. The model will provide information on the impact that a cyber-attack induced degradation of capabilities in one or more activities might have on the success of a mission. This information will help identify higher priority activities. The ultimate benefit is the application of resources to the network assets that need them the most. The resources can be applied at the planning stage of the mission or during its actual execution since the model can be used to make asset prioritization adjustments in real time. The anticipated final results of NetPAC Phase I will include a proof-of-feasibility demonstration that illustrates the concepts enabled by the proposed approach. These concepts will show that it’s possible to conduct a complete comparative analysis of mission-supporting activities and determine how they should be prioritized. The ultimate intent is to extract the information needed to protect the Air Force’s most valued activities and ensure the successful completion of its missions. The results of the analysis and proof-of-feasibility demonstration will be documented in a final report at the end of Phase I. The Phase I results will determine the continuing research direction for Phase II and will provide the basis for the full-scale prototype to be developed in that phase. The lessons learned from the comparative analysis and demonstration of feasibility will be used to refine the system dynamics model and the performance metrics that will first be defined in Phase I. In addition, the knowledge gained from the construction of a limited set of scenarios in Phase I will provide guidance to the development team in constructing a comprehensive set of scenarios for the prototype demonstration in Phase II. The entire Phase I effort will be focused on building a prototype that can ultimately be fielded at the Air Force level or at a regional Network Operations and Security Center, and getting the final product ready for commercialization.

Keywords:
Mission Prioritization, Mission Assurance, Network Defense, Information Assurance, Global Information Grid, Cyber Defense

Current cyber network defense strategies often focus on treating all tasks or activities that support military missions as if they were of equal importance, thus requiring the same level of protection to mitigate the effects of potential cyber attacks. Clearly, this is not the case. Mission-supporting activities have different impacts on mission objectives and therefore must be prioritized. There is a need to alter the current defense focus from information assurance and perimeter defense (ensuring the successful transmission of information to the appropriate destinations) to mission assurance (ensuring the attainment of mission objectives). 21CT’s Network Prioritization Analysis Capability (NetPAC) is a holistic approach using system dynamics modeling to represent the activities supporting one or more Air Force missions. The model consists of key activities and interactions, feedback loops, and delays, all critical factors needed in analyzing mission assurance. The NetPAC Phase I technical effort resulted in the generation of an early prototype, paving the way for full implementation in Phase II. The system dynamics approach was shown to be feasible for addressing the Air Force objectives. In Phase II, we plan to enhance the capabilities of the system dynamics model by considering an entire spectrum of Air Force missions and supporting activities, the cyber services underlying these missions, and the software needed to facilitate data entry, model execution, and collaborative decision-making across military organizations.

Benefit:
When fully developed and deployed, NetPAC is expected to give military planners and commanders the ability to analyze missions, mission-supporting activities, and IT assets and services to determine the priorities that must be established to satisfy military objectives. NetPAC will provide a “what if” capability to support collaborative decision-making about mission and activity prioritization. The decisions will be at both the planning stage and the execution (real-time) stage of military missions.

Keywords:
Mission Prioritization, Information Assurance, Mission Assurance, Network Defense, Resource Allocation, System Dynamics, Collaborative Decision-Making, Modeling,