"Cyberdraft" Would Press-Gang Geeks Into Government Service

Could your company's IT department or dev team soon be drafted as digital soldiers in an ongoing cyberwar?

The Cooperative Cyber Defence Center of Excellence, NATO's think tank for cyberdefense, is located in the beautiful medieval city of Tallinn, Estonia--the front line of warfare's future.

In 2007, Russian hackers paralyzed Estonia's infrastructure as retaliation for tensions with Russia's government--one of the world's first confirmed acts of cyberwar. Since then, Estonia's IT industry has served as the country's digital militia.

Some people would like to see the same thing in the United States.

There is talk of establishing an American “cyberdraft” in which entire companies could be drafted to defend government and private computer networks in time of war. Talk is theoretical right now, but it could be inching closer to reality. Cyberdrafts of various sorts already operate in Estonia, China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Israel, and elsewhere. The question of the relationship between private Internet security firms and crucial American government and business interests is one of the great unresolved questions of a cybersecurity bill expected during Obama's second term.

At the present time, relationships between online security firms and United States military and intelligence organizations are believed to be strictly informal. There have been cases of individual engineers and researchers at firms such as Google and McAfee comparing notes and offering off-record advice when foreign state-sponsored hackers were suspected of attacking government computers, but no protocol is on the books for press-ganging cybersecurity experts into government service. Google famously waded into the realm of cyberwarfare activism several months ago when it warned certain Gmail users they might be victims of state-sponsored attacks. These users disproportionately came from the political, think tank, and journalism worlds.

According to research presented at the 2011 International Conference on Cyber Conflict in Tallinn, legal precedent and tools exist for the United States to create a cyberdraft in a wartime situation. In order to mitigate concerns relating to the chain of command and the time-sensitive needs of protecting government and private sector servers, most experts agree that entire companies would have to be “drafted” and switch their entire focus to security-sensitive concerns dictated by government.

Recent government actions indicate that cyberdraft talk is, in fact, moving beyond mere theory. In August 2012, the Defense Department introduced extensive changes to their cyberwarfare rules of engagement that call for United States Cyber Command to collaborate with the private sector to defend non-government computers during emergency events. Cyber Command is the arm of the United States military that deals with offensive and defensive cyberwar capabilities. Even though the August rules call for the Pentagon to defend private business interests, the change nonetheless forces private IT and security teams to become de facto military partners during wartime.

Brenner believes that if a cyberdraft comes to the United States, it would likely take the form of a geek National Guard.

One paper presented at the 2011 conference described both the potential need for a geek draft and the potential challenges. Authors Susan W. Brenner of the University of Dayton Law School and Leo L. Clarke believe that special wartime circumstances could dictate some form of a draft for security geeks to temporarily work in government service. Due to logistical and time frame issues, this would probably take the form of an entire company temporarily working in government service.

Private sector actors are, through government contractors, already being hired as cyberwar mercenaries. Defense giant Raytheon is actively hiring “cyberwarriors” to work with various intelligence and military entities. Raytheon is specifically hiring coders, engineers, and information assurance experts to work at installations in Fort Meade, Maryland, Melbourne, Florida, and various other sites. Fort Meade is home to Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, while a cluster of defense contractors locate cyberdefense-oriented offices in Melbourne. Other contractors, such as ManTech, also fulfill similar roles.

There are challenges to the geek draft. “If the draftees become full-time members of the military, it really doesn't make sense as a practical matter. The government would presumably only need to call them into action when a crisis arose--along with, probably, having them take certain actions routinely to help fend off attacks--so it might be better to use a kind of National Guard approach, so they were only 'called up' when needed,” Brenner told Fast Company.

According to a report in Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, representatives from the IDF will be sent to scour for Jews abroad with cyberwarfare potential with interest in speaking to military recruiters.

Brenner believes that if a cyberdraft comes to the United States, it would likely take the form of a geek National Guard. A similar setup already exists in Estonia, where the country's Cyber Defense League is an informal militia of IT experts protecting the Baltic state's infrastructure from attacks by Russian and other hackers. The volunteer organization works under the umbrella of Estonia's Defense Ministry and jumps into action when the country's extensive electronic banking, utility, or military infrastructure online is threatened. Estonia is one of the most wired countries on earth; the small nation even holds their elections online, with citizens able to cast secure and secret e-ballots through a special encryption and virtual signature system. The country also has a thriving tech sector that's home to an abnormally large and robust startup scene.

While it isn't a cyberdraft, Israel is building a Jewish foreign legion of computer geeks. Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which specializes in cyberwarfare and cyberintelligence, is embarking on a recruitment drive in the Jewish diaspora. According to a report in Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, representatives from the IDF will be sent to scour for Jews abroad with cyberwarfare potential with interest in speaking to military recruiters. The newspaper cites a military source as saying that “Our first order of business is to search Jewish communities abroad for teens who could qualify […] Our representatives will then travel to the communities and begin the screening process there.”

Unlike the NSA or Cyber Command, Unit 8200 serves as a hotbed incubator for Israel's thriving startup scene. Many of the country's best known startups boast 8200 alumni as founders or prominent employees; Unit 8200's alumni association even hosts annual startup fairs which attract recruiters from multinational corporations. Due to 8200 alumni's backgrounds in information assurance and cryptography, veterans are in hot demand among security firms worldwide. At the same time, this also creates a network of ties which gives the Israeli military significant leverage in the private sector for potential informal cyberwarfare assistance.

Similar situations where the tech community serves government cyberwarfare interests exist in China, Russia, and Syria. All three countries' governments and militaries hire hackers for cyberwarfare projects or collaborate with hackers on pro-bono operations performed for patriotic reasons.

If a geek draft ultimately does come to the United States, it will be through legislation. The proposed Senate Cybersecurity Act of 2012 was killed due to heavy lobbying by industry giants like Google and civil liberties activists groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Provisions in the Act would have arranged for coordinated responses by techies during large-scale attacks such as, say, a shutdown of U.S. banks. One of the biggest challenges for Obama's second term will be the delicate horsetrading of passing a new, revised cybersecurity act that will satisfy the technology sector, banking, utilities, the military, intelligence agencies, and other actors.

The ultimate challenge for the United States--cyberdraft or not--is the logistical demand for building a coordinated response to any future digital Pearl Harbor. In both cyberespionage and cyberwarfare, hackers backed by foreign states have been equally enthusiastic about raiding information and causing problems on government and prominent U.S. private sector computers. If that awful day does happen when large sections of the power grid are taken down or the banking sector finds themselves offline en masse, we'll suddenly find private Internet security firms working much more closely with the U.S. government.

For more stories like this, follow @fastcompany on Twitter. Find Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article, on Twitter.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Interview: Brian Clifton on Cutting Through Data Noise and the Future of Analytics

In the seven years since Google Analytics launched, the realm of analytics has changed hands from the purview of the IT department to the marketing department and beyond. But just because we can readily access the tools does not mean that we are necessarily putting them to good use. To gain some insight into this we interviewed Brian Clifton, author, consultant and trainer, who specializes in performance optimization using Google Analytics.

Brian acted as head of Web Analytics for Google Europe from 2005-2008 and recently released the third edition of his "Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics," used by students and professionals worldwide. 

CMSWire: Do people collect data that is useless or unnecessary?

Brian Clifton: No, and let me say that I don't think collecting *any* kind of data is useless. However, it can be distracting and generate a higher level of "noise." The mistake I see most often is people not focusing i.e., they simply look at all of the data all of the time. Beyond the high level reporting of metrics such as total visitor counts, total revenue etc., looking at all of the data all of the time has very little analytical value. Therefore, what you need to do, is chop up the data into meaningful groups of similar data points i.e., segment.

Example segments to enhance the signals from the noise:

• Customers
  • A segment that includes only visits from existing customers — even if they do not purchase from your site when they visit. This is why this segment is so valuable — these visitor have bought from you before!
• Engagers
  • After customers, Engagers are your next most valuable group of visitors. They have shown engagement, i.e., made an effort, perhaps even given you their contact details. Examples include registrations, contact requests (form submissions), file downloads, ranking products and content, comments and feedback, video views, clicks on social love buttons etc.
• Mobilers
  • A segment that includes only visits from mobile devices. Mobile is a very different experience to browsing on a bigger screen. Lots of implication for your web site structure/design if this segment is significant to you.
• Non-Bouncers
  • A segment that excludes all bounced visits i.e., removes single page visits that have no engagement. The theory is that these visitors are clearly not interested in your website, so remove them from your analysis.

Of course these segments are not mutually exclusive and you can be very creative by combining them.

My point is that data "noise" is not something to be discarded. It's only noise relative to a specific question you are trying to answer at a particular time. When you look at answering a different question, and that noise can be a rich data stream indeed (people have won nobel prizes for analyzing noise!). Therefore, always collect the full spectrum of web data and user segmentation as your tool for focus and analysis.

Editor's Note: To get more insights from Brian, follow him on Twitter @BrianClifton

CMSWire: How can a company decide which data to collect? Are there common metrics/strategies that work across the board or does it change on a case by case basis?

BC: My approach when I first engage with a client is not to show or look at any analytic reports. I usually get an odd response to that when I have been hired as the web analytics expert! However, the first meeting is a workshop where I sit down with the marketing team to understand their needs and abilities. By needs, I mean understanding what tasks they perform as a group and therefore how they can measure the success (or not) of that. A metric that measures success is known as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI).

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Marketing vs IT: Who Drives the Customer Experience? #BMAthriving

For many organizations, their definition of customer experience falls into a customer support department heavily staffed to keep wait times for call centers low. But that’s missing the mark.

Customer experience truly stands as the one way to create a lifecycle story for customers across all channels. And with today’s über online customer, marketing spend has geared up to outpace IT in technology to get the right infrastructure in place. In fact, if Gartner research is any indication, CMOs will have larger IT budgets than CIOs within the next five years.

That was the discussion at a recent Business Marketing Association (BMA) regional conference in Denver. Designed to facilitate conversations between marketing and IT executives, the agenda included insights from leaders in customer experience, as well as experts in content marketing who help keep customers engaged across all channels.

Forget the Warm Fuzzies

Customer experience isn't just a feel-good tactic; it's a foundational element in acquiring, serving and cross/up‐selling customers. Marketers have to understand how to design the customer experience, enable it and use it to grow value because today, it’s the experience that defines organizations. There’s a big difference between problem solving for customers and creating delight. Customer support addresses the former while customer experience delivers the latter.

But to create a truly meaningful customer experience, companies have to be prepared to measure everything they do throughout the customer experience lifecycle, from strategy to delivery. Doing so requires a solid foundation in technology because it’s metrics that create understanding around where and how often a customer engages and then generates the ability to create a consistent experience across all touch points — social media, apps, email, a phone call, click-to-chat and so forth.

With the plethora of things and ways to measure customer experience, panelists talked about the need to simplify measurement. One approach is Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS simplifies data collected into one number that can be tracked over time, reported quickly and allow for adjustments in processes rapidly.

Creating Digital Conversations

Since customer experience is intended to create meaningful relationships, one of the linchpins for making this happen is content.

If you expect customers to keep coming back to you, it’s because you have content that matters to them. Content creates conversations, but it has to be a two-way street. Some companies focus on listening to customers, which is an indisputable first step. But there also has to be a point when they engage. How would you feel if you were at a cocktail party and someone followed you around all night but never said a word? Creeped out, most likely.

Once you have your content marketing plan and platform in place, companies have to resist the urge to control the conversation. Communities want to interact, to comment, share perspectives and openly criticize what doesn’t work. That’s hard for some companies to stomach. But authenticity is a big part of the customer experience and building engagement.

Looking Ahead

Customer experience is a challenging world and will continue to become more complex over the next 24 months. In looking down the road, the panelists spotlighted some key trends:

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com