Digital Dominance – Using Data as a Tactical Advantage

Digital dominance is all about using data as a tactical advantage in this new world of cyber actions and defense. Data, its management, analysis and reporting are the key towards maintaining the tactical edge in any organizational posture. Irrespective if the application is civilian or military in nature, digital dominance is at the core of a successful enterprise, homeland security and military force projection. In the case of homeland security and military the digital dominance can serve as a significant force multiplier in both defense and offensive measures.

Data is being generated at an incredible pace from within and outside our firewalls and is building up in our large and sometimes unwieldy data lakes. Data is being generated in vast amounts through the proliferation of computing devices across our networks, “edge sensors” like unmanned aerial vehicles, IOT sensors, mobile device and other smart devices. As our edge sensors propagate more on the field, the data collected should not only be used for tactical decisions but also harvested for long term comparison and intelligence analysis. Another source of data is the internet where actors use this global network for everything from communication to staging nefarious cyber actions. This source of cyber data not only needs to be captured but also sorted and analyzed with advanced automation to ensure we can take near real time actions to detect and mitigate any vulnerabilities. Despite the large advances we have made in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), a large amount of our data continues to be unleveraged because they are not identified, tagged or prioritized.

Collecting, tagging, analyzing and leveraging this data is at the heart of a strong and resilient command and control. This was highlighted by Lt. Gen. Robert J. Skinner - Director of Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) at the AFCEA TechNet Cyber 2022 Event He emphasized: “Data is a vital strategic asset and a key enabler to C2.”. DISA's mission as outlined by Lt. Gen Skinner is to move at the "velocity of action to win”. The volume, velocity and viscosity (Not a Typo!) of data and its management and analysis is and will be at the core of our digital dominance on the battlefield.

While the volume and velocity of data are obvious, the viscosity of data is a little-known concept which has to do with a multitude of factors including data security, data supply chain, layering of data, and intertwining of several data streams within a single data feed. Just like the viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to deformation at a given rate and the informal concept of "thickness"; data viscosity is its resistance to any sort of malicious manipulation despite the complex nature of data feeds with respect to layers of data within a feed.

All the above leads to the refinement of the term “tactical edge” to transform from only data gathering and reporting to more on demand AI / ML capabilities at the end point. In addition, real world events have led to a network philosophy where any end point outside the data center is considered the “tactical edge”. This has interesting ramifications from the perspective of Zero Trust security, data security and edge computing. This new version of “tactical edge” gives operators in the field greater empowerment with respect to the on-the-fly situational analytics they can perform in addition to the ability to leverage enterprise scale resources on the field to deliver on the mission.

Another relatively new frontier for data management is space. There are going to be 4 X more satellite launches compared to a few years ago and that is only going to increase with the proliferation of on demand communication and wireless infrastructure. There will be a similar growth in military satellites involved in intel gathering which will lead to an explosion of data feeds. Additionally, NASA is looking to large cloud infrastructure providers to build platforms that astronauts can use the AWS to run real time applications which will lead to more data being consumed and generated from the edge of space.

Supply chain cybersecurity has long been touted as a priority not only to protect the nations Intellectual Property but also to strengthen our defensive posture. All the above edge computing, AI, ML and other capabilities needs us to ensure that we are securing the data supply chain by protecting the data at the source and monitoring it throughout the data supply chain. This is imperative to ensure that all data stored and consumed across the enterprise can be relied upon as authoritative data.

In essence, “digital dominance” is about using all the above capabilities to not only have a strong defensive posture but also leverage some of the digital capabilities to develop Information enabling measures and use actionable data developed strategically or on the fly at the tactical edge to give our warfighters a distinct cyber advantage over our adversaries.

In the end, digital dominance in its entirety will deliver the promise of Lt. Gen Skinner’s main point from his AFCEA TechNet Cyber keynote: “If you own the data – you will own the high ground at the end of the day.”