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India needs to have cyber knowledge infrastructure: “Master of Science in Cyber Systems and Operations”. The Cyber Operations Infrastructure certificate is a graduate-level, non-degree programme designed to enable Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Government personnel to differentiate the various components of the infrastructure underpinning cyber operations for its effective use in all aspects of cyber operations.
The objective of the programme should be to prepare officers to deploy cyber-specific assets appropriately within the MoD cyber infrastructure. Officers should be able to assess how differing elements of the underlying cyber infrastructures impact cyber operations. They should:
Learn about the communications systems that support cyber operations and should be able to choose communications modes most suitable for a given cyber mission.
Be able to develop information usage strategies across distributed platforms and should be able to adapt their choices based upon the capabilities of these data-centric systems.
Be able to evaluate the benefits and weaknesses of infrastructure-dependent choices and should be able to integrate these choices in cyber mission planning.
Be able to develop strategies for cyber operations in contested situations based upon their understanding of the infrastructure.
The Master of Science in Cyber Systems and Operations degree should comprise of courses that, in combination, provide a coherent, logical approach to a complex and rapidly evolving military and government domains. In addition to course work, each student must complete a Master's thesis or a capstone project. The Master of Science in Cyber Systems and Operations could be awarded after the satisfactory completion of a programme meeting, as a minimum, the following degree requirements:
All courses must be satisfied through the course of study or through validation prior to graduation.
Completion of a minimum of 30 hours of graduate-level courses.
To ensure a sufficient breadth in operational understanding of the cyber domain, the following course topics must be satisfied as part of the course of study or through validation prior to graduation: Cyber Mission Planning, Network Operations in a Contested Environment, Cyber Wargame: Blue Force Operations, Cyber Wargame: Red Force Operations, Advanced Cyber Systems and Operations.
Completion of an acceptable thesis - on a subject previously approved by the Chair, Cyber Academic Group.
Learning Modules
1. Cyber Functions and Fundamentals. In order to provide officers skilled in the effective use of cyberspace to support military requirements, graduates of the Cyber Systems and Operations (CSO) program should have competence in the following cyber functional areas:
Securely Provision.
Operate and Maintain/Network Operations/MoD Global Information Grid Operations (DGO)
Active Defense/Defensive Cyberspace Operations (DCO)
Operate and Collect/Cyber Intelligence.
Analyse and Advise.
Offensive Cyberspace Operations (OCO).
Investigate
Communications Electronic Attack (Comms EA).
Friendly Cyber Defense Forces
2. Military Applications and Cyberspace Operations. The officer should be able to analyse cyber requirements of military operations and direct the effective employment of cyber assets in support of national and military objectives. In particular, the officer should be able to develop, compare, and evaluate courses of action for the incorporation of cyber capabilities in all stages of operation to achieve the mission, and maintain freedom of maneuver in Cyberspace, and deliver both non-kinetic effects and non-kinetic means of facilitating kinetic attack.
3. Organisational Construct and Policy. The officer should have an in-depth understanding of the administrative and operational structure and command relationships of the organizations and commands that should be operating in the cyberspace domain. Additionally, the officer should be able to recall and apply strategy, policy, and authorities (Indian laws, the Law of Armed Conflict, and national policy) as it pertains to the use of non-kinetic force.
4. Cyber System Engineering. The officer should be able to analyse existing and proposed cyber systems for the purpose of assessing cyber requirements, capabilities and limitations, identifying capability gaps, and devising system improvements. Further, the officer should be able to develop concepts of operations for new systems including integration with existing systems and assessment of test and evaluation plans.
5. Independent Research. The officer should understand friendly and adversarial cyber infrastructures and should be able to diagram and explain subsystem relationships, interactions, and functions. Specifically, the officer should be able to describe and critique existing and planned infrastructures including (1) bottom-up systems for data collection or effects delivery, (2) middleware systems for smart push/pull services in a cloud/service-oriented-architecture, (3) top-down systems for command and control with a common operational picture, and (4) core infrastructure systems providing enabling communications. Additionally, the officer should be able to analyse specific cyber system implementations to identify adaptive cyber vulnerabilities and effects for defensive and offensive operations in both permissive and contested environments. The officer should be able to apply these analytic and problem-solving skills in Joint Information Environment operations to augment manpower with automated intelligence analytics for processing high volume, heterogeneous data sets to automatically produce high value alerts and actions in support of mission objectives.
6. Space. The officer should understand and be able to explain the nature of Space Operations as it is applied within the realm of cyber operations. He/she should be able distinguish between the four defined mission areas (Space Control, Space Support, Force Enhancement, Force Application) and interpret how current and planned space capabilities contribute to the satisfaction of these mission areas.
7. Independent Research. The officer should demonstrate the ability to conduct independent investigation through the completion of a thesis or capstone project. Thesis or capstone work should be conducted in a framework that exercises the practice of innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, and real-world applicability. Further, the officer should be able to present research goals and results in both written and oral form.
8. Joint Military Education (JME). Per community requirements, the officer should have an understanding of warfighting within the context of operational art to include: strategy and war, theater security decision making, and joint maritime operations.
The author is a Ph.D student at IIT Delhi.Views expressed are personal.
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