“Talent is never static. It’s always growing or dying.” STEPHEN KING, Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 17, 2007. In the domain of cyber conflict, I can assure you that talent continues to grow at an incredibly rapid pace that many of us cannot really keep up with. As I travel from Tampa, Florida back home to Washington, DC with hurricane Irene on my tail, the thoughts of the incredible LandWarNet Conference keep coming to mind. I live and breathe the daily reality of cyber warfare and the technologies and talent that make such reality an actuality, and I stand in amazement with the fluidity and dynamic nature of the cyber domain. As I walked the vendor booths of LandWarNet in Tampa, my mind would be flooded with the newer technologies available to the war fighter of the 21st century. To many, we are living in what is called the “End of Times,” a period in the history of humanity where many technological discoveries-both good and evil-would flood the earth and a time where wars and rumors of wars would be a daily reality (in fact 30 minutes of CNN can be quite corroborative of such a belief).
The LandWarNet Conference was a show of talents and newer technologies. I noticed an overwhelming focus on mobile satellite communications solutions—from ruggedized suitcases that can be setup in less than 4 minutes with everything required to deploy a mobile office in the desert with TCP accelerators, satellite phones at broadband speeds, and encrypted communications to manual satellite C2 networks hosting up to 10 cyber operatives behind a mobile switch. We live in a time where both nation states and rogue groups can deploy the very same type of technology for remote communications and be able to launch cyber attacks from the remote corners of the earth for less than 700 dollars! The Internet in a suitcase is here to stay. We live in a time where cyber weapons are a reality, and code is being created with the intent to be deployed against nuclear facilities. “Talent is never static.” It is growing in the cyber realm along with technological capabilities. Policy and Law of Armed Conflict may not be able to follow such reality, painting a future of fear, uncertainty and doubt. Talks of cyber dominance and aggressiveness in cyberspace were a common theme during the conference, setting up the stage of things that are to come. What to do? How to prepare? What to expect? I will be quoting one of my favorite authors again, “Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.” — Stephen King. Among our best weapons are awareness and visibility of what could be, making us security oracles to our organizations. Be imaginative, and understand that talent is growing in the cyber domain faster than any of the other domains.
I recommend the LandWarNet Conference to anyone involved with any aspect of cyber security! To have a glimpse of the technological talent out there was a priceless experience. I would like to personally thank Nova Datacom for inviting me to run a booth in partnership with their organization.
Paul de Souza, CSFI Founder Director
Filed under: Cybersecurity
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