Developing cyber peacekeeping: Observation,monitoring and reporting

Cyberphysical societies are becoming reliant upon the cyber domain for everyday life. With cyber warfare increasingly becoming part of future conflicts, new and novel solutions are needed to assist governments in securing their national infrastructure. Cyber peacekeeping is one such solution: an emerging and multi-disciplinary field of research, touching upon technical, political, governmental and societal domains of thought. In this article we build upon previous works by developing the cyber peacekeeping activity of observation, monitoring and reporting. We take a practical approach: describing a scenario in which two cyberphysical societies experience the negative effects of cyber warfare and require cyber expertise to restore services their citizens depend upon. We explore how a cyber peacekeeping operation could start up and discuss the challenges it will face. The article makes a number of proposals, including the use of a virtual collaborative environment to bring multiple benefits. We conclude by summarising our findings, and describing where further work lies.