Strictly speaking, situational awareness (SA) "is not a new term. As early as 1980s, the US Air Force put forward the concept of situational awareness, which covers three levels: perception, understanding and prediction. In 1990s, the concept of situational awareness was gradually accepted.

With the rise of the network, it has been upgraded to "Cyber Situation Awareness (CSA)", which refers to the acquisition, understanding, display and delayed prediction of the recent development trend of security factors that can cause network situation changes in a large-scale network environment, with the ultimate goal of making decisions and actions.

With the prominence of network security, situational awareness began to appear in the field of network security. In 2009, the White House clearly proposed to build situational awareness in the cyberspace security strategy document published, and sorted out the national cybersecurity centers or institutions with situational awareness capabilities and responsibilities.

Including the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), intelligence department, judicial and anti-espionage department, US-CERT and cyber warfare department, covering national security, intelligence, justice, public-private cooperation and other fields.