Biblio

Although a fairly new topic in the context of cyber security, situation awareness (SA) has a far longer history of study and applications in such areas as control of complex enterprises and in conventional warfare. Far more is known about the SA in conventional military conflicts, or adversarial engagements, than in cyber ones. By exploring what is known about SA in conventional–-also commonly referred to as kinetic–-battles, we may gain insights and research directions relevant to cyber conflicts. For this reason, having outlined the foundations and challenges on CSA in the previous chapter, we proceed to discuss the nature of SA in conventional (often called kinetic) conflict, review what is known about this kinetic SA (KSA), and then offer a comparison with what is currently understood regarding the cyber SA (CSA). We find that challenges and opportunities of KSA and CSA are similar or at least parallel in several important ways. With respect to similarities, in both kinetic and cyber worlds, SA strongly impacts the outcome of the mission. Also similarly, cognitive biases are found in both KSA and CSA. As an example of differences, KSA often relies on commonly accepted, widely used organizing representation–-map of the physical terrain of the battlefield. No such common representation has emerged in CSA, yet.

Cyber SA is described as the current and predictive knowledge of cyberspace in relation to the Network, Missions and Threats across friendly, neutral and adversary forces. While this model provides a good high-level understanding of Cyber SA, it does not contain actionable information to help inform the development of capabilities to improve SA. In this paper, we present a systematic, human-centered process that uses a card sort methodology to understand and conceptualize Senior Leader Cyber SA requirements. From the data collected, we were able to build a hierarchy of high- and low- priority Cyber SA information, as well as uncover items that represent high levels of disagreement with and across organizations. The findings of this study serve as a first step in developing a better understanding of what Cyber SA means to Senior Leaders, and can inform the development of future capabilities to improve their SA and Mission Performance.