Want to achieve Dominance in the Cyber Domain? Learn to control yourself and your opponent with the Six Critical Controls of Cyber Dominance Theory.

Dominance: It’s About Control.

Why do we fight in the Cyber Domain? Cyber Dominance Theory answers: so that you can get what you want, when you want it. You want secure data? Done. You want a website with no downtime? You got it. You want Cyber Dominance.

The daily struggle to achieve Cyber Dominance is Cyber Warfare. Whether or not you wanted to join the fight, you are a part of it. So prepare to defend yourself – or prepare to be a casualty of the war.

Every battle of the Cyber War is about one thing: control. He who has control gets what he wants, when he wants it. Cyber Dominance Theory shows that based on the primary requirements of Dominance, there are Six Critical Controls of Cyber Dominance.

The Six Critical Cyber Controls

You must focus. You have limited time, resources, and knowledge. You must concentrate your energy on achieving these Six Critical Controls every day:

1. Collect cyber information. About your adversaries, about your own systems, etc. Know your network. Know your devices. Keep a pulse on important cyber news.
2. Understand the information. Data is deceiving. Work to understand what it means. Employ tools to transform data into knowledge.
3. Be able to affect reality. Be able to “do things,” to achieve outcomes. Can you change your hosting service? Can you reliably back up your data? Can you block a dangerous protocol?
4. Shape your adversary’s collection of information. Hide elements of your network. Keep important documentation confidential. Encrypt your email.
5. Shape your adversary’s understanding of the information. Assuming they have collected and can access information, make them doubt that info. Make them misinterpret it to your favor. Include honey pots to fool your adversary.
6. Shape your adversary’s ability to affect reality. Make them less able to “do things” or achieve outcomes. Take the wind from their sails. Distribute your servers to make a DDOS Attack less effective. Find a way to reduce their choices.

Control Yourself. Control Your Adversary.

In every choice, ensure you further one or more of the Six Critical Controls. This framework guarantees that – even if you don’t clearly understand or can’t clearly defend a choice – the choice will tend to promote you achieving your goals.

Control yourself, and focus that effort on collecting and understanding information and on improving your ability to affect reality.

Control what you can of your adversary. Focus that effort on shaping his collection and understanding of information and on his ability to affect reality.

Once you can achieve your cyber goals despite adversary action to the contrary – you have achieved Cyber Dominance.