Virginia’s Operational Integration Cyber Center of Excellence  - Group Page

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Virginia’s Operational Integration Cyber Center of Excellence (VOICCE):

Create a world-class “Municipal Cyber Lab” supporting the Comprehensive National Cyber security Initiative.  This lab would simulate a municipality under a cyber attack.  Currently municipalities have very robust teams and infrastructure to support emergencies of the physical type, i.e. floods, hurricanes, fires, etc.  However, cyber attacks are usually addressed as administrative IT staffs function without the same level of attention, resources and processes that are associated physical threats. Risks to the community for cyber attacks are not identified nor incorporated in municipal emergency operations plans. This program focuses on changing the game by incorporating cyber attacks into the mainstream of emergency operations at the local level and creating a “virtual municipality” of randomly generated internet protocol addresses.  The concept would allow capabilities, processes and procedures to be developed. 

Create a node or laboratory that would allow local governments and first responders to plug into state and federal entities and participate in simulated cyber attacks.  The lab would be both physical and virtual in structure allowing many types of simulation and also be a place to share ideas amongst stakeholders across the nation.  Participants would brainstorm and identify cyber attack scenarios.  Scenarios would then be chosen to run in the physical and virtual environments in order to assess the impact of the attack on the community from a physical and virtual prospective.  Running the cyber scenarios would help identify the processes, procedures, capabilities and gaps in protection.

Cyber security must be addressed and understood at local governmental levels in order to provide all citizens within a community the means to continue normal life function during potential cyber attacks.  High level strategies in Federal government often fail to incorporate what the consequences of cyber attack would do to a local community.  How does the local community government prepare and respond to cyber attacks?  What resources, procedures and polices will be implemented or are in place to support local communities under cyber attack?  Cyberspace has changed the fundamental assumptions of everyday life all individuals.  With the advent of networks and interactions between machines and humans, software is now required to address a wealth of new aspects which potentially impact the ways municipalities react in cyber related incidents to serve their citizens.  Procedures, policies and capabilities which enable localities to operate in the cyber domain must be considered simultaneously with state and federal government agencies responsible for cyber security.  These aspects include: real-time communications, security, privacy and trust as well as economic, social and societal implications.  Affordability is a crosscutting concern, a major constraint in future cyber domain capabilities, designs, procedures and policies.  These all require new collaborative insights and approaches.  In a world of spontaneously evolving cyber related activities which ultimate impact all individuals, communities must be prepared to implement procedures to ensure basic services are provided during potential cyber related attacks.  Of particular interest would be a process where analyzing approaches that unify seemingly disparate levels of local, state and federal government entities responsible for implementing cyber security could take place.  The value of a collaborative (municipal cyber lab) approach is its anticipated benefit and hopefully significant improvement in producing procedures, processes and capabilities which enable better a understanding of potential cyber security architectures, for trust and affordability.  “When it comes to cyber security, government and the private sector need to recognize that an individual vulnerability is a common weakness.” Melissa Hathaway, DNI Cyber Security