Ever since the Iranian election demonstrators turned to social media applications, such as Twitter and Facebook, it appears as though every media outlet is calling anything that happens to touch, or think about touching, the Internet, “cyberwar”.

Being of the Jerry Springer and “One of these three soft drinks are poison, tune in at 11pm and we’ll tell you which one” generation, I understand why using an eye catching headline is used. Obviously you, the dirty media, want to drive people to your program/story/blog/cause but, in doing so, you’re perpetuating false information. If my father, who is retired Navy, heard the term “cyberwar” he’d immediately think of words like: military, attack, etc. and not words like: rally, demonstration, and so on.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that the demonstrators in Iran are being brutalized. What people need to know, however, is that the demonstrations, support, or response cannot, and should not, be classified as “cyberwar”. If anything, the online support that is demonizing the election results should be classified as psychological warfare that, although a component of war, is not an immediate physical response.

The Wikipedia definition of psychological warfare hits the nail right on the head:

The U.S. Department of Defense defines psychological warfare (PSYWAR) as: “The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives.”

Does this not more closely match what is happening right now? I think it does. Even though Wikipedia defines cyber-warfare as having a propaganda component, which can loosely be tied to psywar, I fear that too much emphasis is being placed on it.

True cyberwar, which has yet to be let slip, is still in its infancy stage. Just like cavalry warfare, trench warfare, and armored warfare, it has to be perfected – but that’s not to say that it isn’t being tested and polished on the worlds electronic battlefields.

For any media types who are thinking of using “cyberwar” as the basis for an article on what is obviously social dissidence and believers in democracy leveraging technology to spread information please, think of the cringing security professionals trying not to vomit or have an aneurysm reading your story.

P.S. If you want to understand what true cyberwar is going to be, check out the information on the new US Cyber Command being formed.

As many of you already know, I’ve accepted a security analyst position at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada starting in August. I fully expect to hear “You left Bermuda for Lethbridge???” about a million times between now and probably well into 2010. It was, however, a very strategic move for my career and my family life so I have absolutely no regrets about coming to Bermuda and leaving at this time.

So what does this mean? Well my day-to-day job will fall into the following 3 categories:

• Threat and vulnerability identification, classification, and analysis, including on-going research into emerging threats. Activities include system security assessments, vulnerability scanning, and security consulting.
• Design, development, implementation, and management of technical security processes and systems to effectively mitigate identified risks (eg. IDS/IPS, log correlation/SIEM, 2-factor authentication, full-disk encryption, etc.)
• Investigation, response, reporting, and tracking of security incidents, including all associated digital forensics activities.

That being said, I have a feeling that the 3 categories will probably expand to other duties as time goes on and other challenges present themselves.

I’ll probably also see everyone at conferences with greater frequency…hopefully as a presenter. The University sounds very supportive of my presentation/paper goals which is something I am quite happy about. They are also big supporters of training and education, for obvious reasons, and this should equate to more training opportunities. I also hope to blog more frequently and work on more personal projects (perhaps another book or two…maybe even a podcast). Only time will tell.

So wish me luck…it’s a big move back to Canada but I’m looking forward to it!