159
The Cyber Decade:
Cyber Defence at a
X-ing Point
Abstract: As a consequence of the numerous cyber attacks over the last decade,
both the consideration and use of cyberspace has fundamentally changed, and will
continue to evolve. Military forces all over the world have come to value the new
role of cyberspace in warfare, building up cyber commands, and establishing new
capabilities. Integral to such capabilities is that military forces fundamentally depend
on the rapid exchange of information in order for their decision-making processes
to gain superiority on the battleeld; this compounds the need to develop network-
enabled capabilities to realize network-centric warfare. This triangle of cyber offense,
cyber defence, and cyber dependence creates a challenging and complex system of
interdependencies. Alongside, while numerous technologies have not improved cyber
security signicantly, this may change with upcoming new concepts and systems, like
decentralized ledger technologies (Blockchains) or quantum-secured communication.
Following these thoughts, the paper analyses the development of both cyber threats
and defence capabilities during the past 10 years, evaluates the current situation
and gives recommendations for improvements. To this end, the paper is structured
as follows: rst, general conditions for military forces with respect to “cyber” are
described, including an analysis of the most likely courses of action of the West and
their seemingly traditional adversary in the East, Russia. The overview includes a
discussion of the usefulness of the measures and an overview of upcoming technologies
critical for cyber security. Finally, requirements and recommendations for the further
development of cyber defence are briey covered.
Keywords: cyber war review, cyber defence implications, cyber defence recommen-
dations, cyber defence requirements, future technologies, cyber war
Robert Koch
Faculty of Computer Science
Universität der Bundeswehr München
Neubiberg, Germany
robert.koch@unibw.de
Mario Golling
Faculty of Computer Science
Universität der Bundeswehr München
Neubiberg, Germany
mario.golling@unibw.de
2018 10th International Conference on Cyber Conict
CyCon X: Maximising Eects
T. Minárik, R. Jakschis, L. Lindström (Eds.)
2018 © NATO CCD COE Publications, Tallinn
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