Innovation Beyond Just 1s and 0s--Innovating for Cyber Warfare (aka What the Demi-Gods at NSA have Gotten Wrong)

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Presented at BSidesAsheville 2017 by

Ernest Wong

Today innovation is a key buzzword within the US Army, and it is helping to shape the vision for the "Army of 2025 and Beyond" as an agile organization able to adapt and prevail in this complex world. But does our Army have the capabilities to protect vital national interests in cyber? The growth of the Internet in our globally connected world has meant that tools for cyber are constantly changing. Accordingly, do we have the capacity to gain the advantages needed to out-hack our adversaries in this domain? This presentation provides a simple framework for analyzing different types of innovation, and in doing so, asks us to think of new and better ways to promote how the US Army can defend and deter against attacks within cyberspace. By analyzing what innovation really means and by highlighting the differences between four distinct types of innovation (disruptive, breakthrough, sustaining, and incremental), this presentation shows us just how easy the US Army can develop and nurture successful innovations for the cyber domain to out-hack cyber crackers. While most of this presentation focuses on innovations for the defense of the cyber domain, I will also provide key insights into how the US Army currently conducts (and is failing) at operationalizing cyber into tomorrow's battlefields. Fortunately, the talk does provide clues into how the military can bolster not just its defensive cyber operations but also its offensive ones as well, in spite of the controls and restrictions the NSA has imposed and directed.