Can a Theory that Integrates the Natural Systems Sciences Help Systems Engineering of Defense against Security Threats?

Citation of a range of security attacks across several scalar levels suggests shared commonalities of systems form and dynamics. These commonalities imply that one of the most powerful approaches to defense would be design that disrupts these pervasive underlying processes. We use a new, allegedly more comprehensive system of systems processes (SoSP) theory that enables expansion on just one of the key systems processes common to current security attacks, self-organization. We describe several words used in different disciplines that may be confused with self-organization and inhibit needed communication. We describe ten components of selforganization and seven linkage propositions that describe interactions between other systems processes and selforganization to increase resolution on this one vulnerable commonality of security attack. We suggest that the immense attention now given to "translating" lab results in medicine to new clinical treatments needs to be replicated in this domain. We need a "translational," topdown system of systems pathology to address widespread security attacks. We try to provide a glimpse of how the increased detail on just self-organization might help formulate better design of security systems. This serves as a case study of the even more fertile potential of using the 100+ systems processes and many linkage propositions from a unified SoSP as a rich source for security design.