Threatcasting Report and Lab Series Envision Threats and Solutions

By The Army Cyber Institute at West PointFebruary 23, 2017

Threatcasting Report and Lab Series Envision Threats and Solutions

WEST POINT, New York (February 22, 2017) -- The Army Cyber Institute at West Point and Arizona State University are pleased to announce the publication of A Widening Attack Plain, a new report based on an August 2016 workshop involving 25 representatives from government, military, academia and industry. The complete report and an accompanying conference presentation is available for download from http://www.usma.edu/acc/SitePages/Threatcasting.aspx

The report envisions a future threat landscape of 2026 and presents opportunities that empower people and organizations to take immediate action. These possible futures, based on facts and modeled by professionals, can dispel the myths and clear the fog for pragmatic, action-based dialogue. The report also lays out strategies to dispel or allow recovery from the negative futures. Some actions rest in government hands, yet many actions must be adopted and executed within industry, academia and society to be successful.

The next threatcasting workshop will take place in Tempe, Arizona on May 1-2, 2017. We are looking for a diverse group of professionals from across academia, industry, and government to be part of the workshop. Prospective attendees should email aci_threatcasting@usma.edu. The gathered experts will explore complex issues including the advancement of artificial intelligence, the diminished ability to conduct covert intelligence gathering, the growing complexity of code, and the future division of work roles between humans and machines.

Threatcasting is a conceptual framework and process that enables multidisciplinary groups to envision and plan in a systematic fashion against threats ten years in the future. From a wide array of disparate research and data, the group started an ongoing process to craft a vision for the future of digital and physical security along with recommendations on how the Army Cyber Institute (ACI) and the U.S. Army can take actions to disrupt, mitigate and recover from these threats.

The Army Cyber Institute and the threatcasting team are seeking out and collaborating with organizations representing the military, federal government, the corporate sector, academia, and news media as well as the general public in order to apply these findings and discover areas for further investigation and modeling. This collaborative process will enable others to understand what they can do to help given their expertise and capabilities.

To support this collaboration, Arizona State University's Global Securities Initiative (GSI) and the School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS) have established a Threatcasting Lab to host and manage the Cyber Threatcasting Project. Over the next five years, the Threatcasting Project will conduct interdisciplinary, collaborative sessions twice each year to envision future cyber threats ten years in the future.

Each lab session will alternate from the east (West Point, NY and Washington D.C.) to the west coast of the United States (Tempe, AZ and San Francisco, CA), and will produce additional threatcasting reports exploring specific aspects of cyber threats and cybersecurity. Each report will also contain specific actions, external indicators and milestones that can be taken to disrupt, mitigate and recover from the threats. These reports will be shared between government, military, academic, public, private and corporate audiences.

Contact the Army Cyber Institute at West Point via email at contact.cyber@usma.edu, to include information about the upcoming CyCon U.S. International Conference on Cyber Conflict, Nov. 7-6, 2017 in Washington D.C. http://aci.cvent.com/cycon_us. The Cyber Defense Review is now accepting submissions! http://www.cyberdefensereview.org Follow the Army Cyber Institute on Twitter: @ArmyCyberInst.

At ASU's School for the Future of Innovation in Society, we are planning now for the kinds of futures that we will want to inhabit. Focusing on humanity's plausible futures, we make innovation the object of systematic study and informed critique so that we might get what we truly want and need out of our scientific and technological endeavors. With our interdisciplinary faculty, students study the promises and challenges of new technologies and the big ideas that change our lives each day. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Email us at sfis@asu.edu.

Media contacts:

Terence M. Kelley

The Army Cyber Institute at West Point

contact.cyber@usma.edu

(845) 667-7065

Denise Kronsteiner

School for the Future of Innovation in Society

Arizona State University

denise.kronsteiner@asu.edu

(480) 727-6193

Download: "A Widening Attack Plain" - Threatcasting Report: Army Cyber Institute [PDF]