Home / Library / A Widening Attack Plain

A Widening Attack Plain

Threatcasting Report: Army Cyber Institute

Overview

Based upon the technological, cultural and economic shifts and advances in the next decade we begin to see an evolving threat landscape emerging. This new reality of cyber and data security can be seen as a widening attack plain. The attack surface in the future broadens out, including more people, increasing targets, and changing the very nature of security and threat. The cyber threats over the last decade have mainly been isolated to “data only” threats, espionage, leaks and hacks. In recent years, the nature of these attacks have expanded to include micro-targeting, cyber-physical and cyber-kinetic attacks. In the next decade we will see a continuing widening of the attack plain. As we look at the future of cyber threats, we must look beyond the current digital attack surface and see a plain that is far wider and exposed. The nature of hacking and cyber itself will become another tool or weapon that can be used alone or with more frequency as a blended attack. These blended attacks provide the most potential for devastating offense and increased complexity for the defense

Why is this important?

The U.S. military is facing an ever more unpredictable and uncertain future, and trying to develop as much understanding of what that may mean as possible. This report, done by an ex-Intel futurist, focuses on cyber, but it points to a rapidly evolving and as of yet unmapped and ill-defined threat landscape, which is itself evolving rapidly. It is interesting both because of what it covers, and the fundamental and accelerating change that it hints at in future.

Creator

Brian David Johnson

Publication Date

February 14, 2017