An Approach To A Graph-Based Active Cyber Defense Model

Abstract

Securing cyber system is a major concern as security attacks become more and more sophisticated. We develop in this paper a novel graph-based Active Cyber Defense (ACD) model to proactively respond to cyber attacks. The proposed model is based on the use of a semantically rich graph to describe cyber systems, types of used interconnection between them, and security related data useful to develop active defense strategies. The developed model takes into consideration the probabilistic nature of cyber attacks, and their degree of complexity. In this context, analytics are provided to proactively test the impact of vulnerabilities/threats increase on the system, analyze the consequent behavior of cyber systems and security solution, and decide about the security state of the whole cyber system. Our model integrates in the same framework decisions made by cyber defenders based on their expertise and knowledge, and decisions that are automatically generated using security analytic rules.