Making the Puzzle Pieces Fit – Utilizing UAF to Model a Cybersecurity SoS

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhile there are security bundles on the market, most IT departments operate with a wide range of products (an average of 75) just to secure their network (Zurkus 2016). Companies developed the security products independently and offer little to no cross‐product integration. Although many people treat cybersecurity infrastructures as systems, it is far better to view them as a System of Systems (SoS) as many different parts of an organization develop, manage, and operate the systems they must protect. So, for system engineers attempting to secure systems, utilizing the Unified Architecture Framework (UAF) to create a map of these systems and software and how they must integrate is a far better practice than SysML. Not only is UAF specifically designed to handle an SoS, but it includes Security Viewpoints which can more easily represent the complex interactions between individual security systems. In this article, we will briefly discuss an introduction to UAF, explain its benefits when modeling integrated security for complex systems of systems, offer solutions to the most common issues encountered when attempting to model the interactions between security elements, and demonstrate how they address the FuSE concepts of security orchestration and architectural agility.