Leveraging Traditional Battle Damage Assessment Procedures to Measure Effects from a Computer Network Attack Graduate Research Project

The art of warfare in cyberspace is evolving. Cyberspace, as the newest warfighting domain, requires the tools to synchronize effects from the cyber domain with those of the traditional land, maritime, space, and air domains. Cyberspace can compliment a commander’s theater strategy supporting strategic, operational, and tactical objectives. To be effective, or provide an effect, commanders must have a mechanism that allows them to understand if a desired cyber effect was successful which requires a comprehensive cyber battle damage assessment capability. The purpose of this research is to analyze how traditional kinetic battle damage assessment is conducted and apply those concepts in cyberspace. This requires indepth nodal analysis of the cyberspace target as well as what second and third order effects can be measured to determine if the cyber-attack was successful. This is necessary to measure the impact of the cyber-attack which can be used to increase or decrease the risk level to personnel operating in traditional domains.