This week’s assignment will fulfill the requirements for the course objective: “Prepare a plan to manage functions that encompass overseeing a program or technical aspect of a security program at a high level ensuring currency with changing risk and threat environments.”
Assignment Instructions:
You are tasked as the Chief Information Security Officer for a large Fortune 500 International Firm to plan, develop and manage the functions that oversee a new large scale Cybersecurity program. The large scale Cybersecurity program will be a “Digital Blackwater” type organization (see the description below of “Private or Mercenary Armies” from the textbook).
For the purpose of this assignment, you are to search the Internet and utilize course reading materials to research the types of functions, strategies and tactics this organization will use for this new program. Use your imagination and name your proposed organization and follow the requirements below:
REQUIREMENTS:
1. Introduction – Firm name and overview of its purpose
2. Technical organizational proposal:
a. Value proposition for the new organization
b. Functions of the organization including management
c. How the organization will address dynamic Cyber risk and threat environments
d. Strategies and tactics the organization will employ
e. Proposed benefits for the U.S. government
f. How will the organization make a profit
3. Reference Section
MISCELLANEOUS:
- All paragraphs include introductory sentence, explanations or details, and concluding sentence
- The conclusion part of the paper effectively summarizes the discussion and provides at least two recommendations for further research
- Use current and real world data to make your points
- The references should not be more than 5 years old
Private or Mercenary Armies
In an age where cyber warfare is more common than the physical battlefield, it may be necessary for the private sector to stop playing defense and go on offense, Gen. Michael Hayden said on August 1, 2011. Hayden, who led the National Security Administration and Central Intelligence Agency under president George W. Bush, said during a panel discussion at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colo. that the federal government may not be the sole defender of private sector companies—and that there is precedent for such action. “We may come to a point where defense is more actively and aggressively defined even for the private sector and what is permitted there is something that we would never let the private sector do in physical space,” he said. “Let me really throw out a bumper sticker for you: how about a digital Blackwater?” he asked. “I mean, we have privatized certain defense activities, even in physical space, and now you have got a new domain in which we do not have any paths trampled down in the forest in terms of what it is we expect the government—or will allow the government—to do”. Blackwater is a private military contractor that has changed its name to Academi after incidents in Iraq gave them a negative image. If companies decide to hire forces (hackers) to strike back or conduct recovery operations it could change the cyberspace battlefield dramatically (Winterfield and Andress, 2013).
