Cyber home guard

Date: 2022-05-09 20:53:36 MEST

Location: At my office desk.

Visual: 27" inch monitor and top of the head of a friend on a nearby desk. Large window to my right with a house from the late 19th c.

Input device: HHKB Pro 2 hooked into a Thinkpad X1.

State: Complex.

During a break at work I read that one of the largest newspapers in Sweden is writing about a cyber home guard type of thing. Again. About trained volunteers jumping into cyber warfare scenarios and helping out in the midst of chaos. Estonia is doing this! Everything Estonia does is good, apparently.

I think this is a mistake. Security is an ongoing thing, not necessarily something you can airdrop special forces into. Yes, I agree that you should bring in professionals for intrusion investigations. This is not about that.

If we're going to have a "cyber home guard" I think it's a much better idea to give ordinary employees in companies, municipalities, and agencies opportunity to learn and to train together. When push comes to shove everyone is already trained, they know each other and the correct contact ways inside the organization, their peers, and the authorities.

Exercises such as Locked Shields (which I've been in once) and similar things are good but even better is if you can train in your own environment or something that is at least similar to your own environment. I hear there are great training environments for these kinds of things at the Swedish Defence Research Agency in Linköping. It's available for other people to use. It doesn't have to have any connection to the military.