Malicious Threat Anticipation Using An Adaptive Complex Systems Approach

Malicious Threat Anticipation using an Adaptive Complex Systems Approach Sue A. Caskey, Adam D. Williams, Walt Beyeler, Shannon Abbot, Thushara Gunda <i>Sandia National Laboratories</i><i>*, Albuquerque, NM, USA, </i> Anticipating the emerging—and evolving—behaviors of threat actors with malicious intent toward US nuclear infrastructure is a complex problem. Current threat analysis frameworks fail to adequately tackle this problem, and as such we have been taken by surprise by threat actors with evolving motives, capabilities, and tactics, resulting in their ability to exploit gaps within our security posture. Consider, for example, the common understanding of “threat” in the US on September 10, 2001 versus that on September 12, 2001. Similarly, recent problems within the European Union can partially be described as resulting from the emerging nexus of terrorists and criminal organizations. In response, we examine the feasibility of framing threat actors as a complex and adaptive system of systems to leverage a new suite of analytical tools and insights for better understanding of their observed evolution. To investigate the feasibility of building such a framework, this paper introduces core concepts for a complex and adaptive system of systems thinking approach and applies them to the threat actor space. More precisely, such an approach focuses on identifying and describing interactions between different threat actors and their motives, capabilities, and technical means. Such a complex system framing can better support anticipatory thinking regarding emerging and evolutionary behaviors in threat actors. The resulting insights and implications can have beneficial impacts on designing security solutions for the US nuclear infrastructure. * SAND2020- 2330 . Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA-0003525