Becoming Resilient

Daniel Schutzer

Description

Recently we have seen several catastrophic events causing huge disruptions, losses, and panic. There is a growing likelihood that these natural disasters and physical and cyber warfare attacks will increase in frequency and lethality, increasingly impacting civilian infrastructure, due to global warming, increased civil unrest and global tensions as international competition increases.

Imagine if two or more occur at the same time? Certainly, cyberattacks can be planned, rehearsed, and launched during the middle of one or more natural events. Up until now we have dealt with each of these events by trying to build systems that are better at detecting, preventing, and protecting us against them. Sadly, we have learned that these events cannot be totally prevented or stopped and have taken their toll.

There is a rising chorus arguing that we must learn to, both individually and collectively, become more resilient in the face of these disastrous events. But how? The author believes we can learn to do better by becoming more resourceful, innovative, collaborative, and by taking a page from how we fight wars.

This book details how these measures can be adapted to keep our systems operational and to rapidly reconstitute lost infrastructure.

Sujets

• Information Technology
• Computers
• Industries
• Informatique
• Computer crime
• Economics
• Business

Informations

• Publié par: Business Expert Press
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781637424438
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Becoming Resilient
Becoming Resilient
Staying Connected Under Adversity
Daniel Schutzer
Becoming Resilient: Staying Connected Under Adversity
Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2023.
Cover design by Charlene Kronstedt
Interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published in 2023 by
Business Expert Press, LLC
222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017
www.businessexpertpress.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-442-1 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-443-8 (e-book)
Business Expert Press Service Systems and Innovations in Business and Society Collection
First edition: 2023
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Description
Recently, we have seen several catastrophic events causing huge disruptions, losses, and panic. There is a growing likelihood that these natural disasters and physical and cyber warfare attacks will increase in frequency and lethality, increasingly impacting civilian infrastructure, due to global warming, increased civil unrest, and global tensions as international competition increases.
Imagine if two or more occur at the same time? Certainly, cyberattacks can be planned, rehearsed, and launched during the middle of one or more natural events. Up until now, we have dealt with each of these events by trying to build systems that are better at detecting, preventing, and protecting us against them. Sadly, we have learned that these events cannot be totally prevented or stopped and have taken their toll.
There is a rising chorus arguing that we must learn to, both individually and collectively, become more resilient in the face of these disastrous events. But how? The author believes we can learn to do better by becoming more resourceful, innovative, collaborative, and by taking a page from how we fight wars. This book details how these measures can be adapted to keep our systems operational and to rapidly reconstitute lost infrastructure.
The need to become more resilient is growing more important than ever as we spend more of our working, learning, and social lives on the network , with our dependence on digital technology growing. The trends and events leading to this dependence are not going away but accelerating. This includes the dramatic increase in remote working, learning, and playing accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Future digital innovations made possible by communications technology advances such as 5G, 6G, and Wi-Fi 6, and low Earth orbiting satellite communications are likely to add to the momentum of this increased dependence as they gain traction and greater acceptance. But, as the threats grow, we are likely to experience an increase in the frequency and duration of our systems being damaged and/or shutting down. It will become increasingly apparent, and of increased importance and urgency, that our systems become more resilient, and that they are able to continue to function during and after the onset of natural disasters and successful physical and cyberattacks.
To make our underlying digital infrastructure more resilient, we need to not only learn how to build, maintain, and operate more resilient systems, but to become more resourceful and innovative. We need to learn to apply lessons learned by studying how we fight wars. For example, when a warship takes a devastating hit, the Navy continues fighting. Flooded compartments are sealed off. Surviving ships and aircrafts assist, lending a hand, providing vital communications, protection, and repair to the damaged ships and their supporting infrastructure, and rescuing stranded sailors. This sort of collaboration is an essential component of being resilient. When under attack and sustaining losses, the military goes into minimum essential fighting mode with the remaining resources, comes up with innovative work arounds, while rapidly reconstituting and rebuilding. So, dynamic prioritization of resources is also critical.
The good news is that many of the incredible technology advances that have increased this dependence can also be harnessed, when accompanied by people with the proper training and mindset, to achieve systems resiliency, where systems remain sufficiently up and running to meet critical prioritized needs, including being rapidly reconstituted to full service. This book goes into depth about how these sorts of measures can be adapted to keep systems and resources operational and resilient in the midst, and during the aftermath of natural disasters and physical and cyberattacks. As the awareness of the importance of our building and maintaining resilient systems grows, the demand for this book and others like it will grow.
Keywords
resiliency; survivability; rapid reconstitution; systems recovery; adaptability; cybersecurity; cyber warfare; environmental disaster; system availability
Contents
Testimonial
Chapter 1 Communications and Other Enabling Technologies
Chapter 2 21st-Century Trends and Their Impact on Our Daily Lives
Chapter 3 The Growing Threat
Chapter 4 What Is Resilience, and How Is It Measured and Tested?
Chapter 5 A Blueprint for Becoming More Resilient
Chapter 6 Concluding Remarks
Bibliography
About the Author
Index
Testimonial
“The book Becoming Resilient: Staying Connected Under Adversity by Daniel Schutzer provides an excellent overview of the coming technology improvements in computing and communications with its inevitable interweaving of computing in every aspect of our lives. This interweaving breeds extreme dependency ; individuals and society cannot function without connectivity. Resiliency to inevitable disasters, both natural and human (cyber), will be a matter of life and (potentially large-scale) death. This isn’t hyperbole, but the natural consequence of extreme dependency. The book provides a plethora of example applications that will bridge and blend the virtual and physical worlds.
It will be critical, therefore, for the ‘super’ internet to be designed and built to be resilient to any potential attack, even those that are not foreseen even by the best visionaries. Resiliency is in some respects more important than any other property we might demand of the coming internet. Resiliency must be a first-class principle in the design of every layer in the communications stack. The book provides a clear description of what resiliency means, and how it is not the same as security, fault tolerance, and business continuity. It is a topic that stands on its own and that future architects and system designers should study and think about deeply.
This book is an excellent grounding in the topic, and will grow in importance, especially when failures in our current systems demonstrate just how hard it is to keep operating in the face of major outages.” — Salvatore Stolfo, Professor at Columbia University
CHAPTER 1
Communications and Other Enabling Technologies
The last decade has seen amazing technology innovations that make possible and are motivating us toward the digitalization of everything. As our digital infrastructure has evolved and its performance improved, it has made possible exciting new applications, and our adoption of these applications has dramatically grown. As these new applications become embedded into our daily lives, so has our dependency on these marvelous technologies increased. Consider how the Web and browsing have changed. Web 1.0 was largely static and about providing information. Generally, this meant knowledge was captured and put on the Web for users to consume. With Web 2.0, the Web became dynamic, social, and interactive, with everyone both consuming and publishing knowledge, buying things, and playing online. The much-touted Web 3.0, although still being defined, is envisioned to make the Web smarter, more distributed, more democratic, embedded into every device, and even more indispensable. Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic have caused an acceleration of this digitalization movement. To best understand the threats we face in the 21st century, it is important to review why and how this trend toward digitalization has changed the way we live, work, and play, and what would happen if we were suddenly denied the enabling technology, and cut off from the network .
Network Trends and the Need to Be Resilient
As digital communications form the foundation upon which most of these technology changes are based, the author believes it is a key enabler of this change and critically needs to become more resilient. Ensuring that communications networks continue to function when faced with natural disasters or malicious attacks has become a key priority for both government and private industry. This includes resilience against not only environmental disasters and cyberattacks but also jamming and other forms of electronic warfare, physical destruction, supply chain interruption, and its use in misinformation campaigns. Acknowledging this need, the National Science Foundation is partnering with other federal agencies and private industry to fund RINGS—the Resilient and Intelligent Next-Generation Systems program. As stated in its description, central to NextG systems is resiliency to survive, gracefully adapt to, and rapidly recover from malicious attacks, component failures, and natural and human-induced disruptions. Private-sector partners include Apple, Ericsson, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Qualcomm, and VMware. On the federal side, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering as well as and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are taking part.
The Importance of the Layered Communications Model
An important feature of