User-dependent vulnerability discovery model and its interdisciplinary nature

Abstract

Software Vulnerability is a broad discipline that cannot be controlled only by the technologies. The holistic framework is required that statistically encompasses the entire security issues of IT organizations regardless of individual projects. Earlier researchers have developed several mathematical models that determined the vulnerabilities trend over time. Besides that, the most common victims of the vulnerabilities i.e., the software buyers or users were addressed theoretically without considering their impact on vulnerability discovery modeling. In this research paper, we examined the vulnerability discovery rate on the basis of potential users of commercial software. Here we propose an interdisciplinary model that highlights the relationship between the vulnerability intensity and the number of users of the software. The numerical illustration based on several real data sets is provided to validate the proposed user-dependent vulnerability discovery model.