Manual Procedures As Protection Against Cyber Threats

Herb Lin
Friday, October 16, 2015, 12:28 PM

A story in the 10/14/2015 Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/10/14/cybersecurity-fears-are-making-u-s-sailors-learn-to-navigate-by-the-stars-again/) indicates that the U.S.

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A story in the 10/14/2015 Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/10/14/cybersecurity-fears-are-making-u-s-sailors-learn-to-navigate-by-the-stars-again/) indicates that the U.S. Naval Academy is restarting its efforts to teach midshipmen the art of celestial navigation using sextants and chronometers amidst concerns that electronically assisted navigation might be vulnerable in an age of cybersecurity threats.

It’s about time (no pun intended). In the wake of Eligible Receiver 97 (a no-notice Joint Chiefs of Staff exercise held in 1997 to test DOD communications interoperability that documented a variety of serious cyber vulnerabilities), a Navy captain on the Joint Staff told me that when he returned to ship command, the first thing for him to do would be to put his cruiser through a bunch of drills to see how they would operate in an electronically denied environment. That was the right thing to do nearly 20 years ago, and it’s still the right thing to do now—and on a much larger scale than is the practice today. For example, ground troops too must also learn how to operate without GPS to discover where they are, using paper maps and compasses.

The military advantages conferred by our electronic and cyber systems are important, and we should learn how to use them effectively. But we also need to spend time learning what to do when we don’t have access to those systems.

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Herb Lin

Herb Lin

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Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in and knowledgeable about the use of offensive operations in cyberspace, especially as instruments of national policy. In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

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