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Disasters are characterised by their devastating effect on human lives and the society’s ability to function. Unfortunately, rescue operations and the possibility to re-establish a working society after such events is often hampered by the lack of functioning communication infrastructures. This paper describes the challenges ahead in creating new communication networks to support post-disaster operations, and sets them in the context of the current issues in protection of critical infrastructures. The analysis reveals that while there are some common concerns there are also fundamental differences. The paper serves as an overview of some promising research directions and pointers to existing works in these areas.

As natural and man-made disasters become increasingly common, ensuring effective disaster response, mitigation and recovery is growing into a high-priority task for governments and administrations globally. This paper describes the challenges of collaboration within multi-organisational hastily formed networks for post-disaster response, which are increasingly relying on emerging ICT infrastructures for communication and cooperation. We present an interdisciplinary analysis of the conditions for establishing an effective mutual conversation space for involved stakeholders, and how the development of socio-technological systems affects cognitive and behavioural aspects such as established communities of practice and virtual pockets of local order.

Our observations thus far suggest that some of the key issues are overcoming organisational and cultural heterogeneity, and finding solutions for technical interoperability, to ensure effective, pervasive and sustainable information exchange within and between organisations participating in hastily formed networks.

As military priorities are shifting from invasion defense to crisis management and peace support operations, the capability to partake in efficient inter-organizational collaboration is becoming increasingly important for armed forces across Europe. The “solidarity clause” of the Treaty of Lisbon, which entered into force on December 1st 2009, dictates that all EU member states shall act jointly if another member state is the target of a terrorist attack or the victim of a natural or man-made disaster. Sweden has gone even further, stating that it will not remain passive if a member state or another Nordic country is attacked, and expects these countries to act in the same manner if Sweden is attacked. This declaration obligates Sweden to be able to collaborate successfully with allied partners, both within own territories and abroad. Application-based collaboration tools for use in unpredictable settings, requiring high user mobility and network survivability, put high demands on the underlying ICT systems in order to function correctly. Networks employing the TErrestrial Trunked RAdio (TETRA) standard are becoming pervasive as platforms for interagency collaboration in crisis response. Although these networks provide many benefits compared to legacy technology they lack the possibility to offer secure, infrastructure-less and disruption-tolerant communication in challenging environments. Emerging ICT such as MANET-based Reconfigurable Radio Systems (RRS) shows potential for overcoming these problems, in addition to resolving issues of technical heterogeneity. The Common Tactical Radio System (GTRS) is an RRS being developed by the Swedish Armed Forces, intended to be the future ICT system for all parts of the forces, used both in national and international mission settings. However, remaining challenges include threats of node compromisation and adversary network infiltration, as well as the safeguarding of confidential information shared by collaborating parties and preventing information leakage. This paper contributes by (i) giving a summary of recent work in mechanisms for achieving information security in tactical MANETs and Hastily Formed Networks for disaster response. The paper also (ii) presents in-progress work towards the design of a gossip-based cross-layer Distributed Intrusion Detection System (DIDS) for the GTRS system, which takes resource constraints of portable devices into account, and offloads traffic analysis and anomaly detection to more powerful “Big Brother” nodes. An outline of the proposed DIDS architecture is presented, and the paper (iii) suggests future work towards offering a dependable and trustworthy communications platform for efficient and secure inter-organizational collaboration.

Privacy on the battlefield? A bizarre thought at first glance – but is it really that far-fetched? In this study we look at modern conflicts, such as the war on terror, and dig deeper into what privacy means to a soldier engaged in such a campaign. With the ever-increasing amount of technology used for troop command and control, there is less room for an individual soldier to act without being watched. An open question is how the soldiers will react to all this surveillance. It is a long established fact that excessive workplace surveillance may result in negative performance consequences for the affected employees. We believe it is fair to raise the same question about emerging technology for the modern battlefield, and to critically assess this technology from a privacy perspective. Our study does not reveal any hard evidence of ongoing privacy violations, nor of the actual significance of privacy in modern warfare. We do however provide a model for studying how soldier performance relates to the fulfillment of various needs, and examine where attributes such as privacy fit in to the equation. We also call for the research community to pick up the thread and conduct empirical studies on the matter.

Reconfigurable Radio Systems (RRS), based on technologies such as Software Defined Radio (SDR) and Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) offer considerable advantages for military operations, such as increased network survivability and interoperability. The RRS-based Common Tactical Radio System (GTRS), currently in development by the Swedish Armed Forces, is designed for use in diverse geographical settings and for purposes varying from international combat missions to national contingency operations. However, protecting these networks from attacks and safeguarding the carried information against leaks is an ongoing research challenge, especially in combined scenarios where tactical data may flow across organizational boundaries. This paper presents a best-effort approach to Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) for inter-organizational RRS-based networks. The proposed architecture makes use of data mining techniques and an efficient n-dimensional clustering algorithm which has previously been successfully used for real-time anomaly detection in critical infrastructure protection. The DLP architecture is developed as an extension to the GTRS system, modeled and simulated in OPNET™ Modeler. Our results show that common data leaks can be efficiently identified by the proposed scheme, while keeping the important false positive rate at a very low level.

The growing importance of cyberspace to modern society, and its increasing use as an arena for dispute, is becoming a national security concern for governments and armed forces globally. The special characteristics of cyberspace, such as its asymmetric nature, the lack of attribution, the low cost of entry, the legal ambiguity, and its role as an efficient medium for protest, crime, espionage and military aggression, makes it an attractive domain for nation-states as well as non-state actors in cyber conflict.

This paper studies the various non-state actors who coexist in cyberspace, examines their motives and incitements, and analyzes how and when their objectives coincide with those of nation-states. Literature suggests that many nations are currently pursuing cyberwarfare capabilities, oftentimes by leveraging criminal organizations and irregular forces. Employment of such non-state actors as hacktivists, patriot hackers, and cybermilitia in state-on-state cyberspace operations has also proved to be a usable model for conducting cyberattacks. The paper concludes that cyberspace is emerging as a new tool for state power that will likely reshape future warfare. However, due to the lack of concrete cyberwarfare experience, and the limited encounters of legitimate cyberattacks, it is hard to precisely assess future effects, risks and potentials.