Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

The new security challenges of the 21st century are qualitatively different than in the past, as new networked organizational structure of threatening parties-with many groups actually being leaderless-and their quickness in coming together in swarming attacks requires more dynamic collaborative approaches to counteracting measures. To confront this new type of conflict, it is crucial for governments and governmental organizations, military, and law enforcement as well as non-government organizations to begin networking themselves. Response shall encompass harmonious inter-organizational coordination across a holistic security ecosystem to achieve a total effect greater than the sum of the individual parts. The development of concepts such as network-enabled operations open new possibilities to deploy units or teams as agile groupings - which we refer to as SOS - Self-Organizing Security - networks. SOS networks are capable of highly adaptive Command and Control founded on collaborative distributed working skills. SOS networks brings agility via the NEOps communications backbone - to facilitate a common information environment that would allow people, sensors and systems to be dynamically grouped or configured according to particular mission requirements. The aim of this strategic project is to develop a template SOS network operational mechanism as a resilient architectural foundation for the deployment of dynamic, short lived emergency response organizations capable to react quickly to emerging crisis situations. The SOS network will balance micromanagement of subordinates with the excessive independence of commanders based on a trusted overall operational picture shared via the communications backbone. Hints towards a 'change of culture' evolving first responders operations from the traditional hierarchical towards a 'power to the edge' heterarchy will point to policy changes to enable emerging leaders to take action in the 'chaos of crisis'. The strategies proposed will increase the responsiveness and effectiveness of our defense system and by this reduce the vulnerabilities to asymmetric threats increasing the safety of Canadians in today's convoluted world dynamics.