The Handbook of Cyber Wargames: Wargaming the 21st Century New book

Co-authored with Nick Drage, this is an exciting new handbook covering the emerging battles in cyber space.

Cyber security is one of the big challenges of the 21^st century. Failure to meet the threat can have major consequences for the individual, a company, an NGO or a nation state. The cost of cyber crime is in the billions of pounds per year. Cyber wargames are an essential part of the training cycle, education and operational analysis needed to rise to meet this threat.

This handbook aims to fill a gap in the training for cyber-attacks and cyber warfare. By providing worked examples of different types of manual cyber wargame, including aims and objectives for each, it provides a basis for the reader to understand the potential range of games on offer. It also helps educate clients about the different types of cyber wargame available and can help them procure the right type of game in order to meet their needs.

Cyber wargaming combines two complex fields:  wargame design and cyber operations.  This handbook is full of examples of such manual games. It includes examples of:

     Network attack and defence exercises

    Committee games

    Company and state level games

    Example of a Matrix Game

    Analysing the cyber security space using Confrontation Analysis

    Media Wars: The Battle to Dominate the Information Space

    Attack Chain modelling

The book is full of additional information for the reader, such as how a cyber conflict might develop or what the key decisions C-Suite leaders need to consider when faced by a sustained cyber attack.

www.wargaming.co

 

History of Wargaming Project Reaches China

I was a little surprised to find my books selling in China. I know so little about Chinese Wargaming.

Cyber Wargaming at CDANS Conference January 2014

The situation. I was at a major IT security conference that focused on strategic issues including cyber-warfare. The first three days demonstrated most countries are developing plans to deal with the threat and many, including the UK, are building cyber weapons as fast as the programmers can go. A new cold war based in the cyber world has started.

The conference organizer strode up to me with a look of despair. One workshop presenter was still on the plane between Switzerland and the UK. So with an hours notice to prepare a session, what could I do? The answer was play a cyber war matrix game.

International audience, most not gamers, generals, civilian analysts all grappled with the idea of playing a game. Fortunately, I had the second edition of my latest book with me. Co-authored with Tim Price, Dark Guest, Training for Cyber War, gaming internet based attacks, vol 1 has the simplest possible training games around this new domain of warfare. So I pulled the matrix game out of the book, prepared some briefs and off we went.

The game was loud, confused, engaging, the audience loved it. They asked me back next year to present some more cyber wargames. My only comment is that some of the countries representatives were very quick to think of offensive cyber war tactics...