The Second imperative also addresses major operational challenges associated with the acquisition of cyber capabilities (hard and soft) for the US Department of Defense (DoD). These pertain to barriers impeding acquisition and dilemmas related to solution strategies.
Cyber Acquisition
The highly dynamic nature of the cyber domain demands that cyber operators are capable of rapidly evolving and adapting with exquisite timing. These forces, in turn, pressure acquisition specialists to accouter cyber warfighters to keep pace with both cyber domain advancement and adversary progression.
Risk reduction is a crucial element of managing any complex enterprise and this is particularly true for the DoD and its acquisition program. This risk aversion comes at significant cost, as obsolescence by risk minimization is a real phenomenon in DoD acquisition programs and significantly limits the adaptability of its operational cyber forces.
However, in the Department of Defense (DoD), a vigorous tug of war exists between time and risk pressures. Policy changes are needed to drive innovation in response to accelerating threats.
Accelerating Cyber Acquisition
Effective cyber defense operations require acquisition risk models to be extended beyond fiscal and technical risk metrics of performance to include risks associated with the cost of failing to meet immediate mission requirements.
This research leads to the proposal for a time-shifting approach to simultaneously (a) accelerate capability delivery while maintaining traditional rigor, and (b) achieve optimal balance between fiscal, performance, and time risks. This results in introducing a time-driven approach to manage risk with less delay.
Cyberspace Operations
Application of structured text analysis, semantic similarity, and ontology learning theory, along with NLP to investigate automated and semi-automated methods for extracting knowledge from text policy documents and transforming that knowledge into a structured form for use in a Functional Capability Reference Architecture (FCRA) for cyberspace operations.
References:
- Klemas, T., Lively, R. & Choucri, N. (2018). Cyber acquisition: Policy changes to drive innovation in response to accelerating threats in cyberspace. Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CYCON U.S.), 103–120.
- Klemas, T., Lively, R., Atkins, S., & Choucri, N. (2021). Accelerating cyber acquisitions: Introducing a time-driven approach to manage risks with less delay. The ITEA Journal of Test and Evaluation, 42, 194-202.
- Moulton, A., Madnick, Stuart E., & Choucri, N. (2020). Cyberspace Operations Functional Capability Reference Architecture from Document Text (Working Paper 2020-24). MIT-CISL.