The SENDS Pilot Study Final Report was submitted on June 30th 2010. The final report is written as four specific reports, each one respectively addressing one of the SENDS Pilot Study’s four tasks. On this page you will find an overview summary report on the total Pilot Study. Below are links to each of the specific task reports:
Modeling and Simulation Task Final Report
Center for the Science of Cyberspace Concept Document
SENDS PILOT STUDY FINAL REPORT
BACKGROUND
The SENDS project proposes that a formalized scientific study can improve our use of networked domains and help create more secure social spaces while enhancing cyberspace operations and defense. SENDS proposes to accomplish these objectives through a collaborative, multidisciplinary, interagency approach that enforces the principles of science at its very core across the entire enterprise. SENDS claims that we can harness the power of the connective fabric of the cyberspace medium to orient users and developers to the challenges we face in producing a common and shared understanding of the environment for maximum and harmonious exploitation of its connective potential.
Sponsored by the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Center for Cyberspace Research and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering’s (ASD R&E) Rapid Reaction Technology Office, SENDS was initiated to conduct basic research and to address cyberspace operations and security challenges. The convergence of social and computer network-based exchanges produces an environment for the emergence of what are known as wicked problems. These convergences unfortunately obscure the true nature of cyberspace.
It is the purpose of the on-going work in SENDS to address these wicked problems in the context of cyberspace through scientific inquiry and experimentation, helping to build an open-source “Science of Cyberspace.” Through SENDS, we are beginning to examine what might become the laws of cyberspace in ways that we all have the opportunity to define and leverage these new findings about this remarkable interconnecting environment.
In the SENDS Pilot Study we applied science-based approaches to cyberspace operations and defense by leveraging collaborative, multidisciplinary, experimentally-based efforts within models of operational networks. We sought to demonstrate how the rigorous application of the scientific method and computational modeling as an experimentation environment will improve cyberspace operations and defense via a shared understanding and exploitation of interdependencies.
SENDS PILOT STUDY
The Pilot Study, the first step of SENDS, defined and put into action the results and concepts of an Assessment Phase completed in December, 2009. Results of the Pilot Study provide decision-makers with options to fully exploit and bring into practice what we are currently calling the Science of Cyberspace and the Science of Cyberspace Security.
The SENDS Pilot Study has four tasks:
- Build and utilize advanced Modeling & Simulation in defense problem
- Prototype a Center for the Science of Cyberspace
- Review and Recommend Educational Curricula
- Expand and Enhance the SENDS Consortium
Modeling and Simulation (M&S) Task
One of the foundational principles of empirical science is that knowledge is based on observable phenomena, capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions. The accepted practice to meet these ends is experimentation through the scientific method. Scientists develop a hypothesis based on research and expectations. This hypothesis is then put to the test through multiple attempts to disprove it. Using laboratories specifically designed for the purpose, scientists are able to create repeatable events which can be replicated by other scientists. SENDS proposes that we begin to think of highly collaborative, multidisciplinary computer-based models as the science of cyberspace’s laboratory, and simulations of these models in action as the enhancement of the scientific tools and processes we apply. The SENDS Pilot Study’s task to build and utilize advanced M&S in defense problem solving addresses this need for a laboratory for the science of cyberspace.
Within the SENDS Pilot Study, SENDSim was used as our cyberspace model and laboratory to observe and experiment. SENDSim helps cybersecurity professionals face these challenges by providing a platform for understanding threats, predicting user actions, evaluating solutions, and communicating the benefits of a principled security plan to non-technical decision makers. Users can specify network designs, assumptions, and policy parameters. SENDSim then creates a simulated network, a simulated workforce using that network, and a simulated malware threat(s). Incorporating modeling techniques from epidemiology and behavioral economics, SENDSim captures both the behaviors of the malware and the behaviors of the network users. This includes users’ appreciation of cyber threats, their level of technical sophistication, and their actions, such as choosing task strategies, enabling and disabling features, and telling co-workers about threats and solutions. Detailed visualizations demonstrate how malware infiltrates a network, spreads, and inflicts damage. In addition to standard cybersecurity metrics focused on technology, SENDSim adds metrics related to the workforce, such as productivity, as well as metrics related to cost. Users can then perform in silico experiments with different strategies and evaluate possible outcomes without the cost and risk of experimenting with real networks.
Center for the Science of Cyberspace Task
Through a collaborative, multidisciplinary, interagency approach, and working through highly distributed models and simulations like SENDSim, SENDS will grow a community of like-interested individuals and organizations all seeking to further their understanding of cyberspace through a Science of Cyberspace. This community will need to connect, share, exchange and facilitate growth and knowledge. They will need a place to focus all the elements and relationships that will accommodate the distributed, diverse and global nature of their community. The initial concept for this was to create a brick and mortar facility located at the Center for Cyberspace Research at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in Dayton, Ohio.
Although a compelling idea, this brick and mortar facility alone would never reach and embrace all the people and cultures it needs to. Time and distance stood in the way, and as alternatives were explored, a new idea emerged. The new idea was about making a virtual center for studying the science of cyberspace. As the pilot study progressed this virtual facility would come to be called the SENDS Center for the Science of Cyberspace (SCSC), and it would combine with a modest physical facility at AFIT to create a potent hybrid of collaborative community space which could extend itself on a timeless global scale.
To visualize this concept of a virtual center, the SCSC was demonstrated on a scale model mock up utilizing the virtual world program of Open Sim, which shares a common origin with the code utilized by Second Life’s virtual world. Here on this virtual model, the visitor as an avatar can explore design concepts, planning and the possibilities of virtual space utilization. Included on this virtual landscape are representations of various venues such as an orientation center, experimentation laboratories, auditorium, and breakout rooms. In this model, places such as floating skyboxes allow for focus groups, while campfires create a comfortable intimacy for group discussion. There are places for sponsor displays, and interactive kiosks as well as repositories for reference media and documentation for the visitor. Conceptually grounded in the sensibilities of a great meeting and research facility like the Salk Institute in La Jolla, and visually representing a “future forward” attitude in its virtual architecture, we believe that the SCSC will become a place of connection and communication, a place that participants and visitors look forward to interacting within again and again.
Academic Curricula Task
The enhancement of educational curricula that advances the study of the Science of Cyberspace and its complement, the Science of Cyberspace Security, is perhaps the most far reaching task undertaken in SENDS, particularly when synergized with the Center for the Science of Cyberspace task. Specifically, the review and recommend educational curricula task sought to frame a concept that will lead to the establishment of modern cyberspace education curricula for government and non-government education and training. This task examined education both as a complement to the general nature and use of cyberspace and the social connectivity it enables, as well as the more specific topic of cyberspace security education.
This academic perspective provides for the long-term success of our nation in cyberspace and indeed throughout the world. The SENDS Consortium developed a questionnaire on what is needed for a program of study supporting the science of cyberspace. The questionnaire helped us compile inputs and express them into a report. This questionnaire was developed through a series of reviews and responses from experts in the field of education, cyberspace and science. This effort produced a 13- question, multi-part survey which addressed key lines of inquiry. Within the Academic Curricula Final Report you will find key insights and propositions that we have developed through the survey and additional research for this task. This SENDS task does not necessarily seek to resolve the challenges of educating a cyber-enabled America, but it should contribute to that very worthwhile goal through the synergies we’ve established across the SENDS project.
Consortium Task
Of the four primary tasks for the SENDS Pilot Study Project, the “Expand and Enhance the SENDS Consortium Task” is perhaps the most pervasive and influential. This task seeks to advance the study of the Science of Cyberspace and its complement, the Science of Cyberspace Security, through synergies among partners in the SENDS Consortium. Specifically, this task sought to build on the initial interests of a small group of people and organizations seeking to gain a more fundamental understanding of cyberspace while growing the group to encompass the multi-disciplinary, distributed and collaborative nature of research required to lay the foundations of a science of cyberspace.
Starting with just a handful of interested people, the consortium grew to over 140 members that engaged in the project during at least parts of its Pilot phase. These participants were all volunteers, contributing their time and efforts in the interest of gaining a better understanding of cyberspace. Representing not only themselves but also many organizations, the consortium provided the energy, ideas and participation that made the overall SENDS Pilot Study successful.
The consortium was empowered through collaboration through the SENDS Pilot Study substrate comprised of three key thrusts: sharing thoughts and ideas; staying current on news, information and events; and connecting within the members themselves. They were actualized through five specific systems: a very active blog; a webpage; electronic communication systems such as email; cloud-based collaborative applications such as wikis; and third-party publications, such as the IA Newsletter.
This SENDS task did not seek to establish a permanent group to resolve the challenges of educating a cyber-enabled America. The Pilot was about establishing the beginning of the formation of a living and dynamic community of interested people and organizations which must endure and continue to expand in advancing the science of cyberspace.
CONCLUSION
Though the SENDS Pilot Study was given four separate tasks, these tasks are not partitions or independent actions. The power of the SENDS concept is in the interconnectivity and interdependency of all the topics and areas of interest within the science of cyberspace. Each of these task reports show linkages and relationship with each other demonstrating that the real knowledge to be gained through a science of cyberspace is greater than just the sum of it individual parts.
