All Army leaders must have a basic understanding of laws, limitations, vulnerabilities and concepts in the cyber domain, said William Waddell, director of the command control and cyberspace operations group at the Army War College, while speaking March 29 at the GovSec conference in Washington, D.C.

However, providing leaders with a background in cybersecurity is difficult because many questions on cybersecurity roles and authorities across government are unclear.

"We try to make sure that the students understand that there might not be any top cover when they're making decisions on this. There really is no policy in place that says, 'you do this, you do this and you do this.' It's being worked on, but it's not in place right now. So, some of it is MSU: Make Stuff Up," said Waddell.

When it comes to cybersecurity, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Strategic Command and Cyber Command are all still a work in progress, said Waddell.

Not only do kinetic warfare strategies and precedents fail to align with the cyber domain, international treaties, standards and ethical norms were largely established prior to the cyber environment's emergence, he said. This adds a new challenge in that many cyber concepts do not build on students prior military knowledge, said Waddell.

Despite analysis stating that an act of cyber war would likely be coupled with more traditional attacks, Waddell said the Army War College has yet to address the merger of the kinetic and cyber attacks in the curriculum. While his course is very well attended, it is not a required part of the program and time is limited; though, if the class were expanded he would like to address such coordinated attacks, he said.

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