Civil Protection and Domestic Security in Contemporary Hybrid Warfare

Civil Protection and Domestic Security in Contemporary Hybrid Warfare presents a comprehensive approach to civil protection and domestic security in contemporary hybrid armed conflict.

Hybrid warfare encompasses a number of dimensions such as military, political, psychological, cognitive, space, social, economic, informational, or technological. Current conflicts show that hybrid warfare, despite regional differences, is based on a common operational framework that combines conventional and unconventional tactics targeting not only military structures, but also largely targeting civilians (societies). All this makes threats more diffuse, subtle, and difficult to predict. They also often take the form of networked actions and have cascading effects in which they can produce complex secondary effects affecting a range of spheres of society and key infrastructure. In response to this spectrum of threats, individual states need to adapt their security and civil protection systems to the type of threat involved. However, most existing solutions are fragmented, resulting in a reduced ability to coordinate and adequately prepare civilians for hybrid threat conditions. Given these challenges, the book establishes a common language that helps shape coherent risk management and protective mechanisms in dealing with hybrid attacks. It also points in a new direction in ensuring the reliability of information provided to civilians, which is crucial in a hybrid war environment where disinformation is used as one of the main tools of destabilisation. Drawing on theoretical knowledge and practical experiences from around the world, the book provides tools to effectively respond to existing and future conflicts and hybrid wars. Above and beyond this, bridging the gap between concrete knowledge of hybrid warfare and operational needs, this book explores how public administrations, public services, NGOs, local communities, and other actors play a key role in protecting the population during such non-traditional armed conflicts.

Civil Protection and Domestic Security in Contemporary Hybrid Warfare is a vital resource to government and civilian specialists responsible for population security and protection, helping them and their civilian populations to strategise and, oftentimes, to individually mitigate the risk of loss of life or health―as has been demonstrated in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Wojciech Wróblewski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Internal Security of the Fire University, where he also serves as the head of the Postgraduate Studies - Managing Cyber Security in the Public Sector. In 2016, he obtained a PhD in Social Sciences in the discipline of Defence Science, He is an expert in public security, civil protection, humanitarian aid and contemporary threats such as hybrid warfare, cyber security, terrorist threats and counter-terrorism systems. He has a particular focus on the use of artificial intelligence in civil protection and crisis management. He has authored numerous scientific publications focusing on the analysis of homeland security threats and challenges and security engineering.

Michał Wiśniewski is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Management at Warsaw University of Technology. In 2018 he defended his doctoral thesis in Situational Security Management of Critical Infrastructure. From 2011-2012, he worked on a project funded by the MSHE Optimization Model of the Police Management Organization in the Area of Costs, Transport and Real Estate Management. From 2013-2018 he worked on a project funded by the NCRD Risk Assessment Methodology for the Needs of the Crisis Management System of the RP and A Highly Specialized Platform Supporting Civilian and Rescue Planning in the Public Administration of the RP and in the Organizational Units of the NFRS. He is also author or co-author of more than seventy scientific papers in the field of management science on process management, cloud computing, critical infrastructure security management.

Jędrzej Bieniasz is Director of the Cybersecurity Center of Warsaw University of Technology (WUT), Poland and Assistant Professor at the Cybersecurity Team at the Institute of Telecommunications, WUT. He also holds a Ph.D. Eng in Computer Science from WUT. He has been involved in cybersecurity for last 8 years, and in broad IT for more than ten years. He is author and co-author of 30 publications around cybersecurity and IT, and has extensive experience in academic, R&D and industrial projects. His main areas of interest are building resilient organizations, secure systems and applications, as well as the operational area of cybersecurity (threat detection, incident management, digital forensics).