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SERC TALKS: “Cyber Resilience: Technical Concept or Vague Desiderata?”
Wednesday, April 6, 2022 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm EDT
This is the second SERC Talk of the Spring 2022 series on “Cyber Resilience”. This series is curated and moderated by Dr. Peter Beling, SERC Research Council Member, Professor and Associate Director, Intelligent Systems Lab, Hume Center for National Security and Technology, Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech.
View the video in brief (2.22).
The full playback can be viewed below.
Speaker: Dr. Alexander Kott, Chief Scientist, U.S. Army Research Laboratory; Army Senior Research Scientist (ST) for Cyber Resilience, U.S. Army | CONTACT
Abstract
I will begin by lamenting the fact that cyber resilience remains a subject of much confusion and vagueness. It is time for a firmer, better defined intellectual framework for cyber resilience as a technical concept. I will outline two key reasons for pursuing cyber resilience, a military one and an economic one. Along the way, I will caution against a common mistake of conflating cyber security and cyber resilience. They are not the same. Then I will sketch the differences – as well as relative advantages and disadvantages – of two classes cyber resilience: resilience by design and resilience by intervention. I will discuss why autonomy is a key to resilience by design (and to some extent to any cyber resilience) and key features of intelligent autonomous agents for cyber defense and resilience. Regardless the means of achieving resilience, we will not make much progress without being able to measure resilience. We cannot improve what we cannot measure. I will discuss directions towards measuring cyber resilience, and bemoan yet another harmful conflation, that of assessing and measuring.
Biography
Dr. Alexander Kott serves as the Chief Scientist of the Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory. In this role he provides leadership in development of ARL technical strategy, maintaining technical quality of ARL research, and representing ARL to external technical community. Dr. Kott is also the Army Senior Research Scientist (ST) for Cyber Resilience
Between 2009 and 2016, he was the Chief, Network Science Division, Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, ARL, responsible for a diverse portfolio of fundamental research and applied development in network science and science for cyber defense.
In particular, he played a key role in initiating the Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance, among the world-largest efforts to study interactions between networks of different types; and in Cyber Security Collaborative Research Alliance, a unique program of creating basic science of cyber warfare.
In 2013, Dr. Kott served as the Acting Associate Director for Science and Technology of the ARL's Computational and Information Sciences Directorate; in 2015 he also served as the Acting Director of the Computational and Information Sciences Directorate.
Beginning his Government career, between 2003 and 2008, Dr. Kott served as a Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) Program Manager responsible for a number of large-scale advanced technology research programs. Technologies developed in programs under his management ranged from adversarial reasoning in mission command, to command and control of robotic forces.
His earlier positions included Director of R&D at Carnegie Group, Pittsburgh, PA; and Information Technology Research Department Manager at AlliedSignal, Inc., Morristown, NJ. There, his work focused on novel information technology approaches, such as Artificial Intelligence, to complex problems in engineering design, planning and control, and mission command.
Dr. Kott received the Secretary of Defense Exceptional Public Service Award and accompanying Exceptional Public Service Medal.
He earned his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA in 1989, where his research proposed AI approaches to innovative design of complex systems.
He published over 100 technical papers and served as the initiator, co-author and primary editor of over ten books, including Advanced Technology Concepts for Command and Control, 2004; Information Warfare and Organizational Decision Process, 2006; Adversarial Reasoning: Computational Approaches to Reading the Opponent's Mind, 2006; The Battle of Cognition: the Future Information-Rich Warfare and the Mind of the Commander, 2007; Estimating Impact: A Handbook of Computational Methods and Models for Anticipating Economic, Social, Political and Security Effects in International Interventions, 2010; Cyber Defense and Situational Awareness, 2015; Cyber Security of SCADA and other Industrial Control Systems, 2016; and Cyber Resilience, 2018.
Between 2009 and 2016, he was the Chief, Network Science Division, Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, ARL, responsible for a diverse portfolio of fundamental research and applied development in network science and science for cyber defense.
In particular, he played a key role in initiating the Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance, among the world-largest efforts to study interactions between networks of different types; and in Cyber Security Collaborative Research Alliance, a unique program of creating basic science of cyber warfare.
In 2013, Dr. Kott served as the Acting Associate Director for Science and Technology of the ARL's Computational and Information Sciences Directorate; in 2015 he also served as the Acting Director of the Computational and Information Sciences Directorate.
Beginning his Government career, between 2003 and 2008, Dr. Kott served as a Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) Program Manager responsible for a number of large-scale advanced technology research programs. Technologies developed in programs under his management ranged from adversarial reasoning in mission command, to command and control of robotic forces.
His earlier positions included Director of R&D at Carnegie Group, Pittsburgh, PA; and Information Technology Research Department Manager at AlliedSignal, Inc., Morristown, NJ. There, his work focused on novel information technology approaches, such as Artificial Intelligence, to complex problems in engineering design, planning and control, and mission command.
Dr. Kott received the Secretary of Defense Exceptional Public Service Award and accompanying Exceptional Public Service Medal.
He earned his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA in 1989, where his research proposed AI approaches to innovative design of complex systems.
He published over 100 technical papers and served as the initiator, co-author and primary editor of over ten books, including Advanced Technology Concepts for Command and Control, 2004; Information Warfare and Organizational Decision Process, 2006; Adversarial Reasoning: Computational Approaches to Reading the Opponent's Mind, 2006; The Battle of Cognition: the Future Information-Rich Warfare and the Mind of the Commander, 2007; Estimating Impact: A Handbook of Computational Methods and Models for Anticipating Economic, Social, Political and Security Effects in International Interventions, 2010; Cyber Defense and Situational Awareness, 2015; Cyber Security of SCADA and other Industrial Control Systems, 2016; and Cyber Resilience, 2018.
Moderator: Dr. Peter Beling, SERC Research Council Member; Professor and Associate Director, Intelligent Systems Lab, Hume Center for National Security and Technology, Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech | CONTACT