Using Classified Intelligence to Defend Unclassified Networks

Intelligence services have access to unique information about adversarial cyber-exploitation and -attack capabilities. Nations such as the United States should be employing this unique but sensitive information in the defense of national security, government, critical infrastructure, and other networks, but doing so may expose the sources and methods behind the intelligence. Once exposed, access to that unique information may be lost. This paper describes the dilemma, presents a partial taxonomy of use cases for which solutions are needed, and offers avenues for supplying those solutions. In particular, solutions to the problem of using classified intelligence for defense of unclassified networks fall into three approaches. Properties and examples for each approach are presented and assessed.