President's Commentary: Taking on The Cyber Edge

A large portion of this issue of SIGNAL Magazine is devoted to its new quarterly special section—The Cyber Edge. The goal of The Cyber Edge is to do a better job of educating people across a broad spectrum in terms of the cyber threat, its implications, its technology issues and the policies that must be undertaken to solve the challenge.

Currently, from a cyber perspective, there is a dearth of information on what really is going on. Tales and stories abound, but no one goes into enough detail on what is behind those stories. Very few professional publications have properly framed the issues that must be dealt with from a cyber perspective.

Without a doubt, the discussion about cyber needs to be elevated. To do that, we need to build a foundation to educate people about why cyber is important. Without an increased level of understanding across a broad range of decision makers, we never will obtain the resources or identify the true problems for solving the cyber issue.

Cyber certainly is not a new issue. It began to emerge in the late 1980s, and it began to assert its importance in the mid-1990s. This led to its incorporation into the first Eligible Receiver exercise, which took place in 1997 and focused on the Pacific Command. The first national military strategy on cyber operations was not signed off on until 2006. So, it has been a part of military activities for two decades. Yet it has not assumed its rightful place in the national security mindset. Many of the challenges confronted today are the same faced in Eligible Receiver 1997.

The government, as well as industry, are moving at an analog pace in a fast-paced digital world that is moving exponentially. As time progresses, the gap between cyber challenges that must be met and the solutions needed to meet them continues to widen rapidly.

Cyber is a complex issue. It is affected by policy, legal, privacy and national security elements. The debate is about to be engaged, but part of that effort must include closing the growing gap between threats and solutions. And the key to that is increased awareness. We don’t know what we don’t say about the cyber world.

At its heart, cyber is at the core of AFCEA’s mission. The association’s signal origins evolved into communications and electronics, and with them all the associated disciplines such as electronic warfare, information operations, security, intelligence and homeland security. Those disciplines always have been related, but they have become synergistic to a greater degree than ever. AFCEA always has been an association that emphasizes the connectivity among all of its parts. Now, the common thread linking those elements is cyber, and AFCEA is the organization in which that common thread serves as the basis for generating effective action to everyone’s benefit.

Addressing the cyber challenge will require bringing together industry, the intelligence community, the Defense Department, the homeland security community, academia and the critical infrastructure elements. These communities have developed their own distinct intellectual capital over the past few years, which can be converged to provide an increased focus on the cyber world. Hopefully, this will constitute a call to action for those who have not been moving as rapidly as needed.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a contemporary who suggested, “Surely this world of cyber convergence could not be as difficult as building a nuclear aircraft carrier.” Several years later, that person acknowledged that the cyber challenge was several orders of magnitude harder than building that carrier. My view is either we continue to make cyber as complicated as we can—in which case we never will attain the solutions that we need—or we can try to find a way to make it less complex and thereby meet the growing cyber challenge.

Hopefully, SIGNAL Magazine’s The Cyber Edge will help members of the AFCEA community advance in their professional—and personal—lives in terms of meeting the challenges posed by cyberspace. With broadened horizons, our members should be able to contribute better to securing cyberspace for everyone. The nation that has the most to gain from technology also has the most to lose if it is denied in the cyber world.