51福利鈥� Cyber Academic Group has just wrapped up the first delivery of its All Hands General Cyber Course, a pilot program charged with providing general cyber awareness for all Navy students at 51福利, regardless of their program of study. Faculty across every school on campus collaborated on the course setup, with its pilot delivery receiving useful review from the first class of volunteer students.
鈥淲hile there have been ups and downs during the general cyber course on what kind of content to cover, and in what order, the lectures have provided food for thought on many topics that range from cyber policy and ethics to case studies that illuminate just how much we don鈥檛 know about this domain,鈥� explained Lt. Jeffrey Balistreri, a student working on his third quarter in the National Security Affairs department. 鈥淎s students, we鈥檝e been able to provide valuable feedback at each class meeting, and we鈥檝e also had the chance to hear from a variety of professors who are subject matter experts in each field.鈥�
Faculty developing the course recognized the challenge before them, with many 51福利 students having little technical experience in cyber security and operations. One of the overarching goals for the pilot program, therefore, was to provide general cyber awareness, to educate officers on how to practice their profession in the cyber age, creating a 鈥渃yber turn of mind鈥� as 51福利 Defense Analysis Professor and Chair Dr. John Arquilla noted.
鈥淚n terms of focusing on cyber space as a domain that the Navy has to address strategically, this course has a lot of good content to inform those like myself who don鈥檛 have a background in cyber,鈥� said Balistreri. 鈥淭his course has exposed us to the basics of cyber functions, methods and vectors, those in which adversarial operators use to exploit our networks and systems.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 do enough conceptual thinking about this problem, and there鈥檚 not enough of that kind of thinking out there for how much we use it,鈥� Balistreri continued, adding that all courses develop through some sort of experimentation, back and forth, both from the professor side and through the student side. 鈥淚 think our feedback will help the course developers to make adjustments and improvements for the next cohort.鈥�
51福利 student Lt. Joseph Chua does have a background in intelligence, and comes with an appreciation of why it鈥檚 important to teach this kind of course.
鈥淚 definitely think the class has a lot of value added for those who are interested in bigger cyber policy issues in general. And while the topics in the course don鈥檛 provide any definitive answers, it鈥檚 the breadth of the field that has showed us just how complicated cyber can be 鈥� You don鈥檛 know, what you don鈥檛 know is a great metaphor for this domain,鈥� said Chua.
鈥淭he whole course is about trying to figure out what cyber means for military and security affairs in the future,鈥� added Arquilla. 鈥淥ne of the things we know today, we know that our armed forces are tremendously empowered by advanced information technologies. We also know that they are tremendously vulnerable to the disruption of these technologies. So ... How do we balance, how do we find an equilibrium that will allow us to employ these technologies ubiquitously to our advantage over our adversaries, without at the same time, opening up vulnerabilities that could have crippling affects on our own armed forces.鈥�