Insights from NUARI's Cyber Resilience Research Shared at JSAC 2025

On April 8-9, NUARI's Chief Research Officer, Kristen Pedersen, participated in the 2025 Joint Service Academy Cybersecurity Summit (JSAC) at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY.

Kristen was included in a panel discussion on Cyber Resilience and Power Projection alongside distinguished industry experts and government officials.

Before the panel, Kristen had the opportunity to address attendees and share insights and perspectives on NUARI's ongoing research centered around cyber resilience in critical infrastructure, Kristen's primary focus during the panel discussion. Kristen noted that NUARI's ongoing research has been built upon six years of over 300 tabletop exercises with hundreds of organizations. Offering some insights into these exercises, Kristen shared with the audience that NUARI exercise designers and facilitators learn a lot about the client's organizational culture, vulnerabilities, resources, and external dependencies during the exercise planning process. This planning process allows NUARI to meet organizations where they are in maturity, tailoring the exercise to the appropriate level and establishing priorities focusing specifically on decision-making and communication in incident response.

Speaking to the panel's main topic, force projection, Kristen stated that there is a "necessity of growing a national culture around resilience, and the need for this drive to come from both top-down and bottom-up…National cyber resilience isn't possible without individual organizations being resilient."

Tying into her above statement, Kristen addressed the growing responsibilities of hazard and emergency response management moving to individual states and the impact this move would have on force projection. To gain insights into what this might look like, NUARI has facilitated and participated in multiple cross-sector decision-based exercises with scenarios that include various failures leading to cascading effects, including city, county, and state governments, military installations, and the private sector. Kristen was sure to note that the most recent Jack Voltaic exercise was a great example of an exercise with a scenario where civilian infrastructure influences military deployment.

Finally, Kristen emphasized organizations like NUARI play an essential role in developing national cyber resilience. NUARI's work with small to medium-sized businesses leads to that "national culture" of cyber resilience, meeting the effort from the bottom up.