However, cyber’s positioning in the modern warfare matrix remains difficult to define and equally challenging to prepare for. Firstly, cyber-attacks are still not considered official acts of war. Attacks are unseen and hard to attribute to particular threat actors or nation states. Yet, they can cause severe harm – either to society by attacking critical national infrastructure assets or utilities, or in physical battlespaces where electromagnetic signals can disrupt or corrupt communications.
Unsurprisingly, given the rate of digital development more broadly, these attacks will only rise in the coming years. Globally, this leads to 68% of senior defence leaders believing cyber-attacks pose the biggest vulnerability to national defence, according to our survey of senior defence leaders.
Under the surface and within the grey zone
Cyber represents the foremost challenge from within the grey zone, where damage can be done under the surface, without physical interaction or traditional conflict methods. In this context, the spreading of misinformation can be every bit as damaging as a direct cyber-attack designed to take down systems or disrupt operations.
It’s why 61% of defence leaders also cite the spreading of misinformation as a concerning factor about the grey zone, joined by challenges in the attribution of cyber activity (61%) and the weaponisation of cyber itself (55%).
To tackle the issue of misinformation in particular, Multi-Domain Integration (MDI) should become commonplace as a model that creates digital threads, connects domains, ensures real-time generation and sharing of vital information, and breaks down siloes across the entire ally ecosystem.
Tellingly, 93% of senior defence leaders agree that MDI strategies allow for a proactive response to cybersecurity attacks and AI developments. A resounding 89% also agree that MDI programmes can either mitigate against, or build an understanding of, misinformation in the grey zone.
Download our new insight report to uncover a vision for a more collaborative future in defence and learn how Multi-Domain Integration is setting the tone.
The CEMA solution
The strategic decisions made off the back of this concern and insight should involve a concerted focus on cyber and electromagnetic activities (CEMA). Not only does CEMA deliver that much needed information and decision advantage within an MDI framework, but the integration and orchestration of CEMA enables full exploitation of the wireless spectrum to also provide the operational flexibility that senior defence leaders are craving.
CEMA offers a way to manage, synchronise and control defence activities to protect equipment and personnel, while delivering operational advantages that simultaneously deny and degrade adversaries’ use of both the digital and physical battlefield.
As such, when trying to gain visibility of the grey zone and of threats lurking under the surface, by championing an MDI model, CEMA solution integration will be among the most pivotal steps taken by defence decision makers in the coming years.
The ultimate results being a telling presence in the grey zone, a tool to disarm misinformation, and a collective combat to the cyber challenge.
Download our latest report Multi-Domain Integration insights report – Cyber and CEMA: Threats from under the surface and within the grey zone – to dive deeper into this topic.
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