Zachary, I can’t agree more with your point that OPSEC is essential to defeat our adversaries in information warfare. We not only need to know our enemy’s capabilities but also our own. We have to acknowledge that we can’t rule of the possibilities of counter deception from our enemies. The less vulnerable we are, the harder for our enemies to attack our resources. Cyr argues These individuals must possess an intuitive sense and ability to function in an increasingly fast Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act (OODA) loop. They will also have to rapidly combine their knowledge of the adversary (culture, values, modes of operation) with the real-time picture they receive from sensors in order to “convert information advantage to operational advantage.
Per ADP 5-0, to understand something is to grasp its nature and significance. Understanding includes establishing context—the set of circumstances that surround a particular event or situation. ADRP 5-0 states that understanding is fundamental to the commander’s ability to establish a situation’s context. Information collection (to include reconnaissance and surveillance) is indispensable to building and improving the commander’s understanding. ADRP 3-0 states, the intelligence warfighting function is the related tasks and systems that facilitate understanding the enemy, terrain, weather, civil considerations, and other significant aspects of the operations environment
IO seeks to integrate and synchronize information related capabilities with maneuver to target the enemy’s decision-making cycle
What is OPSEC? It’s a process of protecting little pieces of information that might grouped together to give the bigger picture. It is also protecting critical information deemed mission essential for military commanders. It is simply denying your adversary the information that they might need to harm you or the mission. The AR that covers OPSEC is AR 530-1 and goes over purposes, responsibilities, policy, procedures, training requirements, OPSEC review, assessment, survey, contract and subcontract requirements and special access programs. The reasons why we have OPSEC is because any vital information that the enemy can get their hands on can give them an advantage on the battle field or
In the future, technology and digital systems will continue to play an important role in how the United States Army fights and wins our nation’s wars. As technology improves and becomes an increasingly integral part of every Army system, it is important that leaders maintain the ability to fight and win without these benefits. Over reliance on digital systems and unfettered information is a weakness that our enemies will exploit on future battlefields. Ukraine learned this lesson very devastatingly in the recent annexation of Crimea. In order to safeguard the trust emplaced on leaders by the American people, it is a lesson not repeated by the US
The Third week of this class was designed to cover objectives one, two, and three. Objectives one and two were covered in weeks one and two which allowed week three to take what we had already learned about what information warfare is and the theory of warfare and apply it in our week three assignment trough an anticlerical review of the use of
As we have seen throughout the entire history of warfare, ancient world terrorism, political intrigue and elitist terrorism of the middle ages, and into modern terrorism, intelligence is of vital importance on both sides. Armed forces have always used intelligence of some form be it sneaking up a hill and scouting what is on the other side to the use of modern platforms such as
Counterintelligence plays a crucial role in any operation. Counterintelligence is defined in Executive Order 12333 as the means information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted for or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons, or international terrorist activities, but not including personnel, physical, document or communications security programs.” CI can led to a successful or a disastrous mission. In the case of the Bay of Pigs, it was a major CI failure.
The purpose of OPSEC is to reduce the vulnerability of US forces from adversary exploitation of critical information or indicators. The process is a systematic method used to identify, control, and protect critical information and subsequently analyze friendly actions associated with military operations. This includes analyzing the enemy collection means, or sensors, which can observe friendly activities and forward on to senior leadership. Most times this information is not overt like finding top secret plans but rather “it is little indicators, puzzle pieces, that when combined with other indicators, loudly shout ‘Here I am!’ to the enemy.
OPSEC should be used to protect information, and thereby deny the adversary the ability to act. Nearly 90% of the information collected comes from “Open Sources”. Any information that can be obtained freely, without breaking the law, is Open Source. It is social network sites, tweets, text messages, blogs, videos, photos, GPS mapping, newsletters, magazine or newspaper articles, your college thesis, or anything else that
The United States is under attack. To be exact, the nation’s power grid is under attack in the form of cyber warfare. On May 21st, 2013 Congressmen Edward J. Markey and Henry A Waxman published a report that provided the findings from information that they had requested from over 150 utility companies (of which 60% responded). More than a dozen utilities reported “daily, constant, or frequent attempted cyber-attacks” (Markey & Waxman) with one utility reporting that they have about 10,000 attempted attacks per month!
The Information-Related Capability of Operational security (OPSEC) is defined as guarding information to help ensure that military operations stay safe, secure, and secret from enemy forces. This can include information such as Soldier numbers, times, dates, locations, Soldier strength, equipment availability, operation names and other data. OPSEC enhances mission success by preserving the advantages of secrecy and surprise. Terrorist organizations are continuously trying to gather information on U.S. military operations. The information they look for isn’t necessarily classified, but it is still difficult for someone outside the military community to obtain. Never underestimate the information you have, what you take for granted may be valuable
The drawback of Estonia's information technology framework was that its defensive protocol was not much secure and could be easily hacked. Moreover, the country was much depended on internet.
Both civilian and military members of the Intelligence Community perform the role of intelligence gathering, evaluating, analyzing and distributing it to concerned parties to allow for policy making and defense of American national interest (U.S Department of Homeland Security 2012). However, the major difference between the two is the type of information they gather and what it is used for. Civilian operations deal with a broad range of topics related to national security while the DIA, a military organization, focuses on military and defense operations (Kelly 18). Moreover, both have a different level of sovereignty, military members of the DIA, for example, are a part of the National Department of Defense and must report to them (Bradbury
Counterintelligence (CI) involves actions aimed at protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage from penetration and disruption by hostile nations or their intelligence services (Lowenthal, 2014). Three main components of Counterintelligence include collection, defensive and offensive. The collection is the ability to gather intelligence information about rivalry capabilities against own nation; defensive part of CI involves measures to prevent and thwart other nations ' attempts to penetrate into own nation 's intelligence system; while an offensive aspect deal with running double agents to penetrate, manipulate, exploit, and control targeted adversaries. CI is said to be the most essential aspect of the intelligence disciplines, in the sense that it helps in collecting vast quantities of secret information and produce an excellent analysis of intelligence, although, ineffective counterintelligence measures may diminish confidence in the final results (Van Cleave, 2013).
The branches of the military, for a couple generations, have always been the Army, Navy, Air force, Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard; however, in an ever evolving digital world, the notion that outer space would be the next military front is being rapidly replaced by the idea that cyber space will be the next arms race. The United States has been defending attacks on their infrastructure day after day, night after night, when one hacker on one side of the world sleeps, another takes their place to attempt to compromise the US government. The motives may range from a political ‘hacktivist’ trying to prove a point, to an economic spy, trying to gain a competitive edge on its more upstart rivals, to an attempt to control the United States