A Markov model for optimization of information security remedies

Abstract

The problem of selecting an optimal collection of security remedies against a specified set of cyber threats is relevant as far as there is a wide range of different cyber security solutions in modern IT industry. The aim of this work is to formulate an optimization problem for selecting information security remedies using a Markov cyber threat model and to analyze the possibility of solving the problem by the method of sequential analysis of variants. The set of solutions for standard approaches is limited by admissible indicators of the economic damage, and the corresponding restriction by means of a functional and temporal characteristic of the model called its average lifetime is defined. The explicit analytical formula for the average lifetime of an information system expressed in terms of the original parameters of the model is obtained, these parameters being the probabilities of threat occurrence and probabilities of their eliminations by security remedies. The possibility of solving our optimization problem by the method of sequential analysis of variants is analyzed. The program in C++ is developed to experimentally compare the effectiveness of this method compared with the "brute-force" method.