A concept for strategic cyber defense

This paper discusses the meaning and challenges of strategic cyber defense (SCD), and some possible strategies for dealing with these challenges. The purpose is to describe and codify the DARPA Information Assurance (IA) program's conceptual framework for defensive techniques in the cyber realm. The focus in the IA program is on cyber defense techniques for threats which are postulated to have the greatest potential impact at the strategic level of conflict. The specific resource we seek to defend is the national information infrastructure (NII), to include the subset of resources dedicated to execution of the defense mission, and commonly referred to as the defense information infrastructure (DII). The paper summarizes a definition of strategic-level conflict, what we mean by cyber defense in the IA program, and the reason for our specific focus on strategic-level cyber defense. Our current efforts to identify and develop SCD warfighting strategies are described, together with a discussion of the technical capabilities which would be needed to implement the strategies.