Operationalizing Defend Forward: A Paradigm Shift...

In light of the recent and overwhelming global state-of-affairs, it is now timely to enter into a dialogue on operationalizing "Defend Forward".

Is it possible to increase your organizational, personal or nation state resiliency to the active threats you can't yet see, hear, or feel?  You understand that it depends on what the adversary actually is and what medium or environment it is operating in.  So here are just two examples that are difficult to see and detect with only the naked eye:

1. Ransomware
2. Coronavirus

Number One is a threat operating in a virtual environment of vast Information Technology infrastructure propagated across the Internet by adversaries who seek to infest a host and produce a potential outcome as the threat infects vulnerable computing assets.

Number Two is a threat operating in a physical environment of vast geographical and human-based populations propagated across our planet Earth by biological adversaries who seek to infest a host and produce a potential outcome as the threat infects vulnerable human assets.

Fortunately Number One does not have a "Zoonotic" origin.

"Defend Forward", entails the proactive observing, pursuing, and countering of adversary operations and imposing costs in day-to-day competition to disrupt and defeat ongoing malicious adversary infectious campaigns, deter future campaigns, and reinforce favorable international norms of behavior, using all the instruments of national power." --Dr. Erica Borghard

Think about your particular 1) organizational, 2) technological and 3) human-based ecosystems.

How much have you invested in operationalizing a "Defend Forward" strategy for all three?

You see, in the year 2020 and beyond you will need to be thinking differently.  You will need to be investing in a cohesive and strategically balanced Operational Risk Management (ORM) paradigm.

Yes, paradigm.  For those of you reading this, who do not understand the true definition, look it up.

What is currently going on in "Cyberspace" is not that much different than what is going on in our current "Healthcarespace".

Yet one is commanded by human behavior and the other one is commanded by human behavior.

Godspeed Mother Earth!