Cyber Operations

Section IIICyberspace Environment and Tools Introduction

“There were 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every two days.”

(Carlson, 2010)

In an environment with an already rapidly expanding number of users, connections, and data production, we experienced a global pandemic starting in March 2020. This included taking the entire U.S. Government from their offices to work from home. A few excerpts on this transition include (CyberWire, 2021)

“Lieutenant General Stephen Fogarty, Commanding General, US Army Cyber Command, emphasized that DISA and the Joint Force Headquarters‐Department of Defense Information Network (JFHQ‐DODIN) played a central role in enabling the shift to remote work with the Defense Department’s Commercial Virtual Remote (CVR) telework platform”. Lieutenant General Charles Moore, Deputy Commander, US Cyber Command, stated that their use of the CVR

… was actually stood up and put into use within just a few short weeks – from beginning to end, we ended up with about 1.4 million people that were using that capability, and then of course have since burned that down and transitioned over to Microsoft 365.

“Likewise, Lieutenant General Timothy Haugh, Commander, Sixteenth Air Force; Commander, Air Forces Cyber, and Commander, Joint Force Headquarters‐Cyber, noted that the Air Force

increased from 7000 to 300,000 remote workers in a couple of weeks.”

The U.S. government therefore ...