SENDS 2010: The Year in Review

by Carl Hunt, Bob Schapiro and Craig Harm

In sports, when an underdog team surprises everyone and gets into the playoffs, they can’t wait until the next game.  That’s what the SENDS team is feeling right now: the thrill of anticipation as we see our season extended and the team getting better and better when it counts.

Our goal has always been to empower the public to create the future of cyberspace and become part of the SENDS team.  A few months ago, we were in the odd position of being able to open positions on the team, but not having a lot of people to join.  Now that is changing...fast.

From the beginning, SENDS has been fortunate to enjoy the active participation of great thinkers...including some of the people who actually set the course for the future of the Internet.  Most of these people work for the government and major software firms, hired for their expertise in cyber-security.  But as scientists, they wish to transcend that role and discover what makes cyberspace tick.  They know this can only be discovered by working with the people who use the Internet every day; in short, almost everyone – it’s a big team!

That’s where SENDS comes in.

To be blunt, until a few months ago, our resources for reaching the public were not what we hoped they’d be.  But the seeds we planted started to thrive, growing stronger every day.  With this posting, we have now published 31 blogs in the 3½ months from the first entry.  We’ve been fortunate to be highlighted in several online fora, including James Fallows’ Atlantic Magazine blog, the DoD’s Armed with Science blog, and an interesting site called “OhMyGov!”  We’ve even been invited to two Highlands’ Forum meetings to talk about SENDS and participate in discussions of Design in Cyberspace.

The important thing is that you are reading this blog...and if you’re like most of the people who now read and contribute, six months ago you had no idea what SENDS was.  You joined the team!

In 2011, we look forward to empowering people in many ways, as with our initiative for you to help create the new vocabulary of cyberspace.  In fact, thanks to contributors, we have a lot to build on to strengthen and broaden the team.  As 2010 draws to a close, however, it’s worth talking about the direction the SENDS Pilot project has traveled from its inception and to try to put it into context.  That, along with new team members’ contributions, creates the synergy for 2011.

SENDS began in 2009 as a proposal to address the observations of a December, 2008 US Department of Energy White Paper entitled “A Scientific Research and Development Approach To Cyber Security.”  Thus, SENDS began as a project to address cyberspace security, expanding on several of the thoughts from that very fine DOE paper.

It became clear after a 90-day study, however, that in order for the US and indeed all users of cyberspace to explore and exploit the environment, security was necessary but not a sufficient condition to unleash the potential cyberspace has to enhance prosperity on a national and global scale.  We took this challenge to potential government sponsors and they agreed.

In a June, 2010 interagency, multidisciplinary forum in Arlington, VA, the current SENDS Pilot Project was initiated, identifying four main tasks to accomplish in the 12-month pilot.

As we embarked on the project, new ideas came to light as a result of the collaboration of the diverse SENDS participants.  The SENDS tasks were still relevant, but we found that we needed to look through the lenses of living systems and ecology to develop holistic perspectives about the greatest connecting fabric mankind has known.

Several prominent advisors told us that the ecological perspective is a valuable way to think about the challenges of cyberspace prosperity and security, particularly when considered through the standpoint of what is found in wicked problem resolution literature.  The wicked problem resolution advice is good because it also helps us think about the social context of problem definition and resolution: it’s a people challenge, just as are cyberspace prosperity and security.

We took this good advice and blended it with the thoughts of guest bloggers to produce what we think is an objective viewpoint about how cyberspace is emerging around us and how it will affect us in the future.  We looked at people, processes and technology as a convergent and emergent phenomenon (starting here).  These insights have been continuously informed by multiple perspectives, possible through the connectivity that cyberspace offers.

This holistic view is why SENDS is more than just another cyberspace security project.

Through the efforts of a variety of authors, the SENDS Blog has been fortunate to provide diverse perspectives on the SENDS tasks through several backgrounds…the SENDS wiki site has augmented and expanded these perspectives.

Broad thinking about one of the two most long-term focused SENDS tasks, Education and Academic Curricula, for example, has led to contributions from no less than four authors about this important topic.  We have had the good fortune to hear from a school teacher in Canada, an Emmy-Award winning documentary director/ producer, a director of a nationally recognized science center in Florida and a retired military officer (here and here), each sharing distinctive perceptions about how America must look at education in the connected age.

Another long-term task, a Center for Cyberspace Science, has generated equally important and diverse perspectives, ranging from the use of advanced modeling and simulation capabilities to the development of a “cyberspace laboratory.”  When put into the context of better understanding concepts like community in cyberspace and formulating meaningful inquiry about this new environment, a center for studying the remarkable power of cyberspace connectivity seems mandatory for better understanding this new world.

The task to develop relevant models and simulations (M&S) as a “laboratory” for cyberspace is indeed one of the tasks we have invested considerable resources in.  The SENDS M&S team collected data from a variety of subject matter experts, including military, law enforcement and commercial practitioners to develop SENDSim.  This M&S environment, shown in its early stages here, is one of the first products of the Center.

We are also developing SENDSim to become a useful tool to gain insights on the kind of socio-technological convergence issues we’ve been discussing above.  Speaking of understanding socio-technological convergence, the SENDS team has also been fortunate to publish the insights of a senior media analyst to help clarify challenges to look at cyberspace in this way (here and here).  We’ve even had an innovative software developer write about the development of programming languages in the context of socio-technological convergence and ecology!

Another early product of the Center is a White Paper on the Development of a Science of Cyberspace, that while in early draft form, may serve as a framework for the consideration of important topics to demonstrate how such a discipline would be studied.  We will see more similar products from the Center as the Pilot continues, and we expect to write about them here in this blog.

The first six months of the SENDS Pilot Project have been exciting, and chronicling it within the pages of the SENDS Blog has been rewarding considering the diversity of the authors who have contributed.  The remaining six months of the Pilot should be equally rewarding as we see the maturity of SENDSim emerge.

We look forward to experiencing greater government, commercial, academic and even individual relationships as we improve on the Science White Paper through more diverse input, and synergize SENDS through collaboration with other efforts.  We also look forward to formalizing relationships that move the Center for Cyberspace Science into a suitable home.

In coming weeks, we’ll port over this blog and much of the wiki material to a SENDS-dedicated site at www.sendsonline.org.  We’ll announce the movement of the site in this blog and on the wiki when we’re up and running.  Please visit us there, and continue to send your thoughts to words@sendsonline.org or through comments within this blog.

It’s been a great first six months for the rapidly growing SENDS team and we can hardly wait for the next six.  The playoffs await and the season continues!

The Science of Cyberspace Education: An overview

by Craig Harm

As I mentioned in my recent blog, one of the four tasks for the SENDS Pilot Study is to outline a concept that will lead to the "establishment of modern cyberspace education curricula for government and non-government training and education." While I noted other initiatives in this area in the last blog, we feel creating an education plan specifically focused on a study of the Science of Cyberspace requires unique and intrinsic elements.

In a bit of a twist, we have an opportunity to develop curricula that anticipates the emergence of the actual new science. Historically, an academic and education curriculum develops and matures concurrently with the development of a science, and continues to evolve as the science evolves.

With the pace and progress on cyberspace development, traditional education evolution processes may be unable to keep up. Our attempt with the SENDS Project is to “kick-start” educational curricula that better prepares cyberspace users and defenders before cyberspace becomes too complex to study and understand.

I believe the first step in this process is to scope what it is we are trying to achieve, for whom we are doing it and with what content; in other words bound our problem. In order to succeed with the academic approach to cyberspace prosperity and security, we need to address some important issues. We are starting to frame our work with focus on some key points

1. Determine the Scope: Basic entry to Post Graduate level? Continuing education? Industry, Government or Academia as students? Or all?
2. Address how content is determined, developed and maintained?
3. Comment on how, where and by whom is it administered?
4. Determine elements of relevance
5. Address how to make education adaptive and career-level appropriate
6. Ensure education is technically current
7. Speak to cultural alignment
8. Formulate study questions for research to military and civilian academic institutions

My intent is to address each of these over the next couple of months and to provide periodic updates on our progress. However, for this initial overview there are a couple of key points I would like to discuss.

As mentioned in previous blogs, the study of the science of cyberspace will bring a diverse, multi-discipline approach to education. Wicked Problems, Complex Adaptive Systems and Social Science will all play foundational roles in the development of a Science of Cyberspace. Each of these disciplines has their own academic framework and SENDS may be able to synergize with those existing programs. The task for the SENDS pilot and the science of cyberspace itself will be to integrate and infuse these disciplines with those of the traditional sciences to create a logical and comprehensive curricula.

Any study of science requires the knowledge, skills and experience to work in a laboratory. Sciences like biology, chemistry, and physics go to great lengths to build this experience in students. For most elementary students, their first experience in a laboratory was in science class. It was as simple as mixing two liquids together to see a change in color, or as complex as building a structure out of toothpicks to learn about geometric shapes and strengths.

As students advanced in the subject content of the science, so too did they advance in the complexity of the laboratory activities. But it was not just the activities of a laboratory that were integral to learning. Maybe more importantly it was the laboratory skills which were both specifically taught, and subconsciously absorbed. Most science students will remember learning the skills of observation and recording by watching and describing a burning candle. Others will remember learning to use a Bunsen burner. Many learned about the importance of explaining and predicting new phenomena, the essence of science. This same graduated approach of experience and skills will be needed for any student of the science of cyberspace.

In previous blogs we made the assertion that modeling and simulation is the laboratory for the science of cyberspace. Based on the fundamental role laboratories serve in the experimentation process for the study of science, any scientific study of cyberspace will require training, experience and understanding in modeling and simulation. Modeling and simulation, when infused with a disciplined study of social science, will help us determine the behavioral aspects we seek to learn through experimentation. Many previous blogs have addressed the need to understand cyberspace as a social phenomenon (here and here, for example).

While some cyberspace scientists may specialize in model creation, all cyberspace scientists will require the skills to effectively design, use, and analyze models. This is just one of the areas where SENDS will be able to interlink and complement work being currently being done in the education of the sciences and technologies.

There are many other areas like the laboratory example in the education of cyberspace scientists which we must address, but we’ll leave that to future blogs. There is however one area I would like to close with. Effective education in the study of cyberspace will by its very nature require continual adaptation to new technologies and culture.

In observations from their recently completed Cyber Security Certification course, SENDS collaborator Joseph Cuenco, Executive Director, Science Center of Pinellas County, FL recently commented to us that “Perhaps our electronically immersed world has provided our students a more robust basis for their understanding of hardware and software components. The majority of these students were very familiar with the course material and concepts from a hands-on perspective.” This observation highlights what I believe: our current education system is vastly underestimating our young students’ practical experience and grasp of computers, both their use and construct.

Anyone who has or works with young students has seen the vast familiarity, comfort and knowledge about the workings of computers, the Web and even the social attitudes of working, playing and living in cyberspace. The study of the science of cyberspace must address this and evolve to capture this experience our younger generations are getting. Is it too farfetched to hope that we can start to adapt industry and academia to be as accepting of the hand-on knowledge of young folks as they are of a diploma?

We have built a small team to begin the development of a concept for this curriculum and will be posting future blogs as our work matures. The task continues!

The SENDS Academic Curricula Task: A Complementary Effort

By Craig Harm

The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done—men who are creative, inventive, and discoverers. The second goal of education is to form minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered. — Jean Piaget, Cornell University (1964).

Education is at the very core of science. It helps provide us a fundamental understanding of how and why things work. As humans, education starts with us as infants and toddlers touching and tasting as we learn to distinguish things from each other. It continues through our childhood with our formal schooling as we begin to whet our appetite for learning. As we approach adulthood our education starts to become more focused on our anticipated vocation through either post-secondary schooling or formalized apprenticeships. Even throughout our adult lives, continuing education keeps us well informed, current and quenches our thirst for further understanding.

The strength of the United States is not the gold at Fort Knox or the weapons of mass destruction that we have, but the sum total ofthe education and the character of out people - Claiborne Pell

One of the primary tasks for the SENDS Pilot Study is to promote and advance the study of the Science of Cyberspace and its complement: The Science of Cyberspace Security. Specifically, we seek to outline a concept that will lead to the establishment of modern cyberspace education curricula for government and non-government training and education.

The academic perspective provides for the long-term potential success of our nation in cyberspace and indeed around the world. As we grow responsible, cyberspace-empowered citizens, who better understand the nature of a connected environment and all that it enables, we may see the emergence of better, more environment-protecting behaviors of people who connect, no matter where they’re from.

This past November the JASONs, an independent scientific advisory panel published the results of their study on the Science of Cyber-Security, JSR-10-102. While not only supporting the SENDS concept that a fundamental understanding of the science of cybersecurity is needed, the report also addresses some of areas that are key elements in building an educational foundation. Highlighted in the report are: the importance of definitions; the need for a standard vocabulary to discuss the subject; and the need to devise experimental protocols for developing a reproducible experimental science of cybersecurity. The report also says the DoD should support a network of cybersecurity research centers in universities and elsewhere.

First and foremost is our SENDS objective is to make any modern cyberspace education curricula compatible and complementary with other similar or related education initiatives already in existence. A variety of organizations emphasize Cyberspace education activities; a few are listed below...

1. IEEE's Task Force for Network Science Educational Activities

2. The National Science Foundation

3. Department of Education

4. Department of Homeland Security

5. National Initiative Cybersecurity Education (NICE)

6. Science Center of Pinellas County

7. JASONS’s Study - Science of Cyber-Security, JSR-10-102, November 2010

Probably one of the best known national science education program approaches is known as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). In January 2009, the National Science Board (NSB) approved and transmitted a set of six recommendations to the Obama Administration. These recommendations outline a series of steps to improve STEM education and foster innovation to ensure both scientific literacy among the public and ensure global competitiveness in the 21st century.

The NICE initiative’s goal is to “establish an operational, sustainable and continually improving cybersecurity education program for the nation to use sound cyber practices that will enhance the nation’s security.” SENDS Partner, Science Center of Pinellas County, has in its mission statement “To inspire, motivate and stimulate innovative thinking in the areas of science, technology, engineering, math, and career development for K-12 students; enhancing their lives through instruction, hands-on, and experiential education delivered through partnerships with schools, corporations, universities, and community.”

All these initiatives and programs are providing critically needed education opportunities in science, technology and cyberspace. Our plan for the SENDS Academic activity is to interlink with these existing activities and capitalize on their efforts to help build the scientific and technical foundations needed to study Cyberspace as a Science, to better visualize the linkages that promote cyberspace and cyberspace security science and education.

As we continue our journey toward the maturation of a Science of Cyberspace, education will be at its very core. This is what makes the SENDS Pilot study task to establish an outline of modern cyberspace education curricula for government and non-government training and education so important. While there are other complementary ongoing initiatives to strengthen science and technology education, the study of cyberspace as a science will continue to require the integration of additional skill sets beyond those found in the traditional sciences.

We’ll discuss in more detail in our next blog on the SENDS Education Task just how we see this playing out in the SENDS Pilot.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cyberspace

by Bob Schapiro

Words conjure images – we think in images and symbols.  Any good taxonomy of cyberspace must begin with that reality, or else it will likely join the junk pile of history.  At best, its terms would enter the ranks of words that people know but never use.  (Elementary school is nearly a universal experience, but when was the last time you said “tardy” or “lavatory” out loud?  For that matter, “taxonomy” always makes me think of April 15^th…or a stuffed beaver.)

As SENDS develops the foundations of a Science of Cyberspace, we invite your contributions to a new, hopefully universally accepted vocabulary that builds on what works today.  We’ll give you the email address at the bottom of this column, along with our hidden agenda.  (Please excuse me, but I used to produce television newscasts; I have to tease what’s coming up, it’s in my DNA.)

On television, I confront the need to visualize the concept of cyberspace.  I mean, how many images of fingers on a keyboard can you stand?  Fortunately there are many stock animations available on the topic.  You’ve seen them.  Usually you are zooming into some abstract space, sometimes with zeroes and ones flashing past you.  The concept is clear:  In order to deal with cyberspace, you have to move through space.

This is not the best definition, but certainly understandable.  “Space” is right there in the term.  For that reason, some people use the term “cyber realm” or “cyber domain.”  I’ve heard more than one theorist ask if cyberspace existed before we had computers to see it.  Hmmm…in outer space, Saturn had moons before we had telescopes to see them.  Amoebas existed before we had microscopes.  Did my email exist when I was still using a typewriter?  Somehow I don’t think that this is what the theorists meant…

Email is perhaps a better place to begin.  Cyberspace is a big, heavy-duty concept.  Email has obvious analogies to other experiences; these may offer insight and solutions.  For example, is spam just junk mail on steroids?  If so, solutions that mitigate junk mail might reduce the problem.  But what exactly is spam?

An inclusive definition might be “unwanted and unsolicited messages.”  This would include unwanted tweets and Facebook messages...and exclude emails from a magazine to which we actually subscribe.  After all, by subscribing, aren’t we just asking for it?

There are certainly similarities between spam and traditional junk mail.  Both often masquerade as official business, on the theory that if they can just get me to open it, I won’t mind discovering that they tried to mislead me.  (Well, if I open it, they succeeded in misleading me, but I don’t like to admit that.)

Of course, none of the junk mail that the postal carrier brings to my door ever causes my toaster to burn the bagels…or ransacks the address book in my desk drawer.  Obviously there are categories of spam, but there is no similarly accepted four-letter word for “email messages that contain malware” – well, none that we can print in a family blog.  We need a word.  Words are symbols and we think using symbols.  Cognition improves when we have precise, well-understood definitions.

I promised you a hidden agenda.  We actually have two.  The first is that a wide cross-section of folks should come up with these terms or else the lawyers will.  Yes, the scientists will try, but if the words don’t feel right to a lot of people, the lawyers will prevail.  Probably federal lawyers.  Probably committees of federal lawyers.  Do the users of cyberspace really deserve that?

The second is that we’re going to try to make the Internet a more hospitable place with a voluntary “SENDS Seal of Approval”...an early effort to ensure our “Science of Cyberspace” is truly open-source science as we've said in other blogs.  Pardon the hubris, but someone needs to say it: cyberspace belongs to all of us and we all need a say.  If we succeed, you and I will not have to create “accounts” every time we buy something and we won’t confront an unfathomable array of cookies after an hour on the web.

Yes, we are that optimistic.  But we know it will only work if we have a precise and popular terminology, with words that we all can easily understand and remember.  Just send us your suggestions at words@sendsonline.org.

Don’t be shy.  Remember that the term “cyberspace” itself was only coined in 1982.  The science-fiction author William Gibson created it as an “evocative and essentially meaningless” buzzword, as any student of Wikipedia knows.  In fact, Wikipedia needs cyberspace to even have an audience.

There’s an emerging, rich history out there and cyberspace—despite its humble origins—is a concept that is coming to define much of our lives.  You can help define cyberspace.  Send us your thoughts at words@sendsonline.org.

Classrooms in Cyberspace

By Nelson Stewart

[Editor’s Note: Nelson Stewart is a music, English, geography, and history teacher in Hamilton, Ontario.  He is also a contributing subject matter expert on “Cyberspace Age” public education and the musical industry, as he describes in the SENDS White Paper on the Science of Cyberspace.  Below, Nelson discusses his thoughts on how cyberspace is transforming education in the grade school classroom. – Carl Hunt].

As a teacher I have seen in just the past few years an explosion in the use of cyberspace.  There are important ways in which this been a valuable asset in the classroom.  For example, as a teacher of multiple subjects I literally have computer access to a world of knowledge, right from my desk.  When a student asks a question about any subject I can instantly seek out the answer, and if appropriate put it up on a screen and share it with the whole class.  Not only that, but I can often provide a photo, video clip or a sound-bite to accompany the information I pass on to the students. 

My students recently completed a cross-curriculum assignment involving the presentation of songs of a socio-political nature.  Each student was required to research the history of the song, the composer and the way the song relates to similar music and the world at large.  They also had to provide an analysis of the song from both a lyrical and musical perspective and then discuss it with the class.  Not only was research done using the Internet but each song was played for the class using YouTube. 

This power is augmented by the use of Smartboards in the classroom, which are touch-sensitive and are linked directly to the Internet through the teacher’s computer.  This means that even a primary or junior student has the ability to instantly connect with the world through their fingertips.  As we move toward a time when each student has their own Internet capable device, connected to the vastness of cyberspace, the possibilities seem endless.  Indeed, my school board just issued $185,000 worth of iPhones to school board staff so that they may have a reliable and consistent means of communication. 

Once we get to the point where every student has an iPad or similar tablet device, for example, then two things are likely.  The first is that these devices may lose their novelty, and therefore will just become tools, much like text books and whiteboards now.  As students and teachers get used to these new devices in the classroom, students with headphones plugged in listening to music -- as a lot of us do when we're working -- won't seem strange (the next generation of teachers, who were raised in an iPod/laptop world, will be even more accepting of this).

Secondly, if every student has a standard electronic medium then it will be easier for the teacher to plan around that.  Lessons, audio-visual aids, etc., can all be downloaded into each device and used in a uniform manner that is supervised by the teacher.  Report cards, homework, letters to the parents, and permission forms can all go home with the students on their tablet.  As technology advances, those devices will no doubt provide increasingly stimulating ways to improve pedagogy as well (for example: holographic images, direct cerebral connections that “transport” students to new lands, etc.).  While isolated experiments of this nature are being conducted around the world, we have a long way to go to fully exploit these new ways of thinking about the classroom in cyberspace!

Today, such devices only provide access to children’s games, music, and bare-bones Internet access, but one can easily imagine how much simpler it will be for students, particularly ones with learning disabilities, to access cyberspace by “plugging” in directly just by thinking about it or interfacing cerebrally, a la The Matrix.  Education must not be limited to so-called standard ways of perception, and new forms of cyberspace connectivity are beginning to offer ways to overcome the lack of eyesight, hearing or other senses.

Of course cyberspace and its accompanying technologies come with their own sets of problems related to use in the classroom.  Students with hand-held, Internet-capable devices are sometimes more interested in emailing their friends or playing on-line games than what is going on in the classroom.  To my mind this directly relates to the general decline in attention-span and on-task time in the classroom that is viewed by many teachers to be a result of technology overload, particularly in relation to cyberspace communication and gaming at home.  As always, achieving balance is important…but that’s not a problem unique to cyberspace.  I think a science of cyberspace can certainly inform how we achieve that balance.

In the end, it will be up to teachers of this and new generations of students to challenge themselves and their educational systems to harness these new technologies and connectivity in ways that produce interesting and relevant forms of education.  Cyberspace is expanding, as are the technologies that leverage it: as teachers we must ensure our students can take advantage of this new world, not deny its role in education.  The classrooms of the “Cyberspace Age” offer far more winners than losers if we get this right.

High School Students’ First Milestone in Cyber Security Certification

by Joseph Cuenco, Executive Director, Science Center of Pinellas County, FL

The Science Center of Pinellas County (SCPC), St Petersburg, FL, has teamed up with Raytheon, SRI International, and St. Petersburg College in creating an innovative cyber security educational program that will prepare high-school level students for testing in industry recognized certifications. The Science Center of Pinellas County and Raytheon have been affiliated with the SENDS Project for almost a year now and are consulting on the educational curricula task.

The program’s focus on practical training and knowledge helps qualify students for credits towards a two or four-year degree in “Network Security” from St. Petersburg College, an academic partner to SCPC. The program objective is to prepare students for careers in cyber security -- with the skills and knowledge necessary to protect national, corporate, and civilian networks; provide them STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) foundation components; and help them learn about career placement opportunities with the best companies.

We are currently exploring with the SENDS Project and our Raytheon instructors how we might tap the SENDS Collaboration Substrate to enhance the educational program. We want to help students and teachers expand their repertoire of planning and modeling tools to assist in decision-making about tough cyber security problems, and offer them the SENDS cyberspace laboratory environment for experimentation and testing of new ideas.

Students have just completed the first module of the Cyber Security Certification, the CompTIA A+ hardware and software component. Many are opting for taking the certification tests in the next few weeks versus waiting until the end of the 15-week program. Preliminary data indicates that many of these students (ranging from 9^th graders to seniors) are presently qualified to pass the CompTIA A+ certification exams now, even before completion of the training!

Why this Course? Understanding the student’s rational for undertaking the program helps to explain their excellent progress. Our interviews with students tell us that they greatly desire to qualify for internships in cyber security as well as further qualify for armed services and government programs such as the US Cyber Corps. Equally important, they really desire to expand their knowledge in the field and use this training in the real world.

There is another aspect to this Cyber Security Certification program that has engaged these students: the conceptual frame of cyber security provides a great deal of cache – particularly around the dividing line between the “white hats” and “black hats.” Cyber ethics and the module on cyber law obviously make very clear student’s obligations and requirements in these areas. Yet, this still continues to be an intriguing area for them. One aspect is fairly clear from the high schooler’s viewpoint. Learning the skills of a cyber ninja is beyond cool. It’s empowering!

Student and Adult Learner Synergy. Our present student base is comprised of high school students mixed with adult students, in a university-based learning environment. The adults are more interested in obtaining job skills and certifications which will enhance their portfolio of employment skills. There is one dynamic that we are beginning to learn more about – what each of the student segments can “learn” from one another or share in an osmosis-like environment. These high schooler’s appear to learn and think almost as fast as today’s dual-core processors, challenging the older students to learn differently, as well.

For the adults, there appears to be much more rigor and thought required into learning new concepts; almost certainly requiring a great deal more energy at the end of the work day to be receptive to brain stimulation. Can the two segments benefit one another in this learning process? Our observations suggest that the answer is yes: there are benefits to both populations of students.

What can the adults provide the younger students? They help to focus on structure and rigor of their learning process. These adults obviously possess a great deal more experience having gone through various levels of formal and informal training. Tools, process, and discipline have been necessary in order for their desired educational goals to be achieved. Our high school students are observing that some of these “adult approaches” to learning might be useful to them too. It’s a great mix of youthful energy and more experienced academic rigor!

Industry Perspectives. A key element to learning cyber security foundations through the teaching of industry experts is understanding the practical application of these concepts in the work environment. The students learn to frame their questions in important ways. What are the benefits from working with virtual machines? Why is the documentation really important? What was the worst case of troubleshooting I’ve had? What is the optimal humidity setting for a server room? (I asked that one).

Our cyber ninjas are beginning to quickly develop their skills, and we are all beginning to better understand the role cyberspace and cyberspace security play in our future. We may just learn as much from our students as they learn from us!

Cyberspace's Laboratory

by Craig Harm

Cyberspace is an amazing laboratory for observation at the same time it connects us socially and professionally in real life. Our search for understanding in this living laboratory offers us a better comprehension of this extraordinary environment in ways no previously explored environment has been able to do in our history. As we refocus some of our best thinking towards better understanding cyberspace holistically as an interconnecting domain powered by the process of exchange and the outcome of emergence, we must consider cyberspace as a medium that enables exploration as much as exploitation. These two related ideas serve to frame the important questions we must ask to better understand cyberspace and fulfill the basic criteria of science: explain and predict.[1]

One of the foundational principles of empirical science is that knowledge is based on observable phenomena, capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions. The accepted practice to meet these ends is experimentation through the scientific method. Scientists develop a hypothesis based on research and expectations. This hypothesis is then put to the test through multiple attempts to prove and disprove it. Using laboratories specifically designed for the purpose, scientists are able to create repeatable events which can be validated by other scientists.

For the “traditional: sciences, we are all familiar with how this experimentation is accomplished: Chemistry and Physics have specially designed labs (particle accelerators come to mind); Biology demonstrates experimentation in life through nature and evolution (as well as labs); Medicine has research and controlled studies. But what about the Science of Cyberspace…how will we accomplish the principles of observable phenomena and repeatable experimentation?

As cyberspace evolved, tradecraft and technology served as the basis for our knowledge of cyberspace and users and developers focused almost exclusively on technical solutions to advance an environment that we are only now beginning to understand. Yet any attempt to explore, understand and exploit cyberspace requires a fundamental scientific foundation, which the current technology-focused approach fails to provide. To gain this understanding we must better observe and experiment within cyberspace.

Emergence, exchange and self-organization are effects we could potentially observe and measure through successful study and experimentation as a part of a Science of Cyberspace. As we’ve pointed out elsewhere in this blog, the observance of emergence must be a fundamental object of study within this new science.

And, as we build towards an observation of emergent behavior, we must also consider exchange as a part of cyberspace science. If exchange might be the fuel for emergence, self-organized criticality serves as the transmission for it. So how will cyberspace scientists observe these elements of emergence? The answer manifests itself as it does for the traditional physical science: a laboratory specifically and uniquely designed for the purpose of studying cyberspace.

Whereas sciences like biology, chemistry and physics have concepts and laws that can be experimented with through visible, physical media, cyberspace has not yet revealed those laws. The challenge for experimentation within a science of cyberspace is how to observe the virtual existence of its complex concepts and laws. In SENDS, we believe this lack of a physical, visible media for experimentation may be overcome with models and simulations.

We propose that we begin to think of highly collaborative, multidisciplinary computer-based models as the science of cyberspace’s laboratory. Within the SENDS Pilot Study, SENDSim will be used as cyberspace’s model and laboratory to observe and experiment. This blog already contains entries which go into detail on SENDSsim so please refer to those discussions for more details.

As the SENDS Pilot Study progresses, we must look to the modeling and simulation effort SENDSim provides. It is an opportunity to not only look at the specific scenario of Conficker, it is more importantly an opportunity to prove the viability for modeling to serve as the science of cyberspace’s experimentation laboratory. Just as we think of the important role chemistry, biology or physics labs fulfill to those respective sciences, so too will modeling serve the same role for the study of a Science of Cyberspace. In a way it is ironic that we will use cyberspace to observe cyberspace. It’s really quite interesting that in fact cyberspace is a medium that enables exploration as much as exploitation.

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[1] Or, as biologist Harold Morowitz puts it “starting with observation, developing theoretical explanations of the observations, and using these to predict other observations.” (Morowitz, H., The Emergence of Everything, Oxford, NY, 2002, p. 7).