Cyber - Project - Documenting Combined Capabilities for Internet Security

Documenting Combined Capabilities for Internet Security

Transnational network operator communities, which comprise roughly a few thou- sand individuals from volunteer organizations, non-profits, and for-profit firms, are little known but critical actors ensuring Internet security. Operator community members collaborate informally with both industry peers and law enforcement to keep nefarious activities such as botnets and phishing out of cyberspace. For instance, approximately 90% of e-mail that traverses the Internet is spam. These actors ensure that spam does not reach users’ inboxes. Yet, precisely because these communities operate ad hoc, through personal relationships based on trust, they remain vastly understudied. This project proposes to fill the research and policy design gap in this space. Through interviews, fieldwork, and Track II style workshops, researchers will engage directly with parties involved in operational incident response to better document and understand (1) how operator communities function, (2) how they could improve cyber incident response by developing more systematic combined capabilities with law enforcement, and (3) how to better design cybersecurity policy in light of these dynamics. The end goal is to produce both academic and policy oriented documents that culminate in a book designed to provide state actors with a much needed roadmap to developing reliable combined capabilities for incident response.

Researchers

http://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/people/amy_zegart

Amy Zegart

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation

Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science

Amy Zegart is co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Professor of Political Science, by courtesy. She is also the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and directs the Cyber Policy Program. She is a contributing editor to The Atlantic. Before coming to Stanford in 2011, Zegart served as professor of public policy at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research examines U.S. intelligence challenges, cyber security, grand strategy, and American foreign policy. She has authored several books, including Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC, which won the highest national dissertation award in political science, and Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11, which won the National Academy of Public Administration’s Brownlow Book Award. Her most recent book is Eyes on Spies: Congress and the United States Intelligence Community.

https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/people/jesse-sowell

Jesse Sowell

Cybersecurity Postdoctoral Fellow

Jesse is the 2016-2017 Cybersecurity Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and holds a PhD in Technology, Management, and Policy from MIT. Jesse focuses on understanding the institutions and political economy of Internet operations vis a vis conventional modes of domestic and inter-state governance mechanisms. This work includes studies on infrastructure resource management and policy, infrastructure security, credible knowledge assessment, and operational epistemic communities’ role informing public policy. Jesse’s dissertation evaluates the common resource management institutions that sustain the integrity and security of the Internet’s numbers and routing system. The dissertation documents how the roles of these institutions, comprising diverse transnational operator communities, managing the complex of physical and information resources supporting the integrity of global Internet connectivity. Concluding analyses narrow the focus from operational authority to the character of political authority in these communities, rooted in the family of consensus processes used to adapt resource policy and institutions apace with Internet growth and development.

http://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/people/Herbert_Lin/

Herb Lin

Senior Research Scholar for Cyber Policy and Security and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security, Hoover Institution

Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in and knowledgeable about the use of offensive operations in cyberspace, especially as instruments of national policy. In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; and a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. He recently served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/people/harold-trinkunas

Harold Trinkunas

Deputy Director, Senior Research Scholar

Harold Trinkunas is the Deputy Director of and a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Prior to arriving at Stanford, Dr. Trinkunas served as the Charles W. Robinson Chair and senior fellow and director of the Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. His research focuses on issues related to foreign policy, governance, and security, particularly in Latin America. Trinkunas has written on emerging powers and the international order, ungoverned spaces, terrorism financing, borders, energy security, drug policy and Internet governance.