Cyber Mission Operations: A Literature Review

Abstract

Military commanders follow various principles of war aiming at reducing material and human losses as well as maximizing the advantages in military missions. Military mission operations are increasingly complex due to the intensive use of information technology, requiring the development of a more accurate view of mission assurance, particularly in cyber missions. In this survey, we aim to unveil the state of art on Cyber Mission Operations. In a quasi-systematic research we selected 51 papers from the main scientific databases and we summarized, described, and compared 18 papers. Research problems, application domains, and main concepts have been obtained from the papers. Gaps in the literature on cyber mission operations were also revealed. In addition, we used a new process to perform this survey which has some advantages over other processes: objective classification of papers, significant reduction in execution time, fast visualization of results, fast refinement of research, and validation of relevance of the papers. The main contribution is a quasi-systematic and updated literature review of cyber mission operations, pointing out gaps in the literature and research problems to be addressed by researchers. This work is meant to be useful for researchers who need to identify research problems and challenges on cyber mission operations.