UK to create new cyber defence force
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Cyber is pretty clearly defined among the people who use it. Other words are not.
Now excuse me as I continue surfing the information super highway!
Maybe the people using these terms (ie, people creating a "defence force" for the UK) should be more in touch with... more current lingo?
Sure would give them at least a vague sense of credibility if they called this something more like an internet/network orientated security... force.
On the otherhand, maybe these people having the massive tell of proclaiming "but this is CYBER." is a good thing? We know to dismiss what ever they're suggesting as uninformed and generally a terrible idea.
What is "more current lingo"?
> an internet/network orientated security... force.
It isn't Internet specific. It isn't just about networking.
the names Howard bob Howard :-)
Maybe not a single word, but "technology and information warfare"?
its a William Gibson reference for you youngsters
They need a new term.
What will happen here is they will create a team that will be written out of usefulness by procedure instantly and that is all.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/contents/articles/busines...
Basically sending the army after the nation's own kids.
Just a week ago, one of the largest public transport companies in Sweden got hit by a DDOS attack. Their website, ticket system, and other areas was effected for several days. It was presented in the news as a major cyber attack, likely originating from organized crimes in countries far far away.
And then a website for 16 year olds "crackers" in Sweden came forth... I still see news articles lagging behind, still describing how government should deal with this "new" threat. All from secret police to anti-terrorist equipment, and I doubt that the military is that far behind in getting a piece of the increased budget pie.
If they can get defence into good shape then they'll have achieved something worth admiring.
In all likelihood the new military branch will focus on weaponizing zero-day exploits and licensing NSA's surveillance/analysis services, which is far less interesting.
Fifteen years ago (maybe even ten years ago, depending on which reserve force one joined), you could join the UK reserve forces and the general feeling was that one could easily go a few decades without being mobilised; now, people are told on joining to expect to be mobilised - it's routine.
The US is a very warlike society, with a significant civilian buy-in to the idea of the armed forces and reserve forces. The UK, whilst as a nation just as busy travelling around the world to meet interesting people and shoot at them, does not have nearly such a civilian buy-in; there are already rumblings that reservists are just less attractive to employers on the grounds that they can be expected to disappear for nine months, and the employer is forced to hold their job open for them. This is clearly a big concern for the government, because they're trying to push the idea that employing a reservist brings advantages. Many employers seem... dubious that losing someone for nine months is worth the less tangible benefits.
Some reserve forces are being asked to increase on the order of 50% in about 5 years; given that in the UK it can take three years (and sometimes more - five years isn't unheard of; I understand that in some nations, reservists might spend several weeks or even months doing all the initial training in a single block; that simply won't work in the UK unless civilian attitude to reservists undergoes a massive change) to take a new reserve recruit and make them deployable (on the "trained strength" as the vernacular goes) this is one hell of a recruitment target.
The network infrastructure reservist branches are still in their infancy; in the British navy reserve, the branch is very, very new. They are still working out just what they're about. The kind of IT professional I anticipate they'll be trying to recruit will almost certainly feel a bit ripped off to be exercising their years of experience (for which, as contractors, they probably charge up to a hundred a day) on initial pay which, as I recall, is around 40 UKP a day, before tax etc. The initial basic training and militarisation can easily take a couple of years anyway, before they even start thinking about branching, so this might be something of a hard sell; "join us, and spend two years slogging around fields in the mud, and eventually we'll use your civilian skills at a much lower rate of pay than you get for them in your day job". Given that one of the main selling points of the reserve forces in the UK is that you get to do something a bit different, this is going to be a very hard sell.
They need to be able to mobilise people at very short notice and deploy them anywhere in the world under military discipline for the best part of a year. It's no good if they can just say "Oh, I'm busy next week." (although the number of reservists who effectively do say just that when they get the call is astounding :p ) To fit into the military environment they'll need to have undergone the same basic reservist training as everyone else. Certainly in the naval reserve, it's just another branch, like all the others. If you joined the naval reserve for this, expect to go through the two years or so of navalisation and basic training first, like everybody else. There's also the legal aspect; if you're attacking another nation as part of a military effort, and you're not on the books as an official military combatant, what are you? A mercenary? A terrorist? War criminal? Whatever you are, you don't get the legal recognitions and protections that official armed forces get. As I understand it, part of the justification for not treating properly all those chaps wearing orange boiler suits in Cuba is that they weren't proper official military soldiers; if that's what happens to people who aren't official soldiers, I certainly wouldn't be interested!
I did once see someone recruited specifically for his ability to speak Arabic; he was rushed through as fast as they could and given special dispensation for some courses before being mobilised (took about a year from identifying him to giving him a pit in Baghdad, where he had some mutant officer rank because nobody quite knew what rank he should be) but he was in all legal respects just as much in the armed forces as all the other reservists being mobilised. Given that this information infrastructure operations branch is something the MOD are actually planning properly, they are not planning to have it as what you seem to think; essentially a bunch of phone numbers of civilians to ring and hope they don't mind leaving their life for a year at two weeks' notice.
Their civilian specialist team available for consultations and non-military deployment already exists; GCHQ.
ADDENDUM: All the above is based on my knowledge of how things ARE now, and how they HAVE BEEN in the past. The future is an unknown and hey, maybe the MOD does want a ragtag bunch of IT admin staff to partake in military operations.
I assume you mean here "£100 per hour"?