Overview
Develop methodologies and tools that enable security assessment of systems too large to be evaluated in a lab or testbed.
Cyber-Plexus System Analysis
The Cyber-Plexus System Analysis thrust is built upon developing specialized models that map out the digital landscape of smart communities and scalable algorithms that perform security analysis for the protection of those communities. The thrust aims to build a framework that is capable of capturing the behavior of the digital community network, and analyzing it for trends, patterns, and relationships within the data in order to facilitate analysis of the network’s security. The framework can then be used as an experimental virtual testbed to test security solutions, threats, and glitches.
The principal objective is to evaluate cyber-security resilience by analyzing and predicting the behavior of the system under cyber security threats. The focus is on developing modeling techniques that capture the impact of actions, such as attacks and network changes, on large system-of-systems. In particular, the thrust aims to:
- Analyze how the system responds to malicious actions
- Determine the expected behavior of the system under both normal and abnormal operation scenarios
- Measure the impact of deploying security solutions on the performance of the system
The Challenge
Establishing a reliable digital twin requires reconciling discrepancies between different sources of information at varying levels of granularity, detail, and accuracy. Such significant challenges arise due to the lack of visibility into the system, up-to-date structured documentation, and understanding of the system context. Thus, there is a need to address the diverse sources of data to ensure that the subsequent analyses are based on trusted models.
The Solution
The Cyber-Plexus Systems Analysis thrust resolves this challenge by designing advanced multi-resolution models that simulate system behavior and realistic and evolving threats. The main research outcome is establishing a methodology to gather digital community data into analyzable models that evaluate the cyber-plexus’s fundamental state and behaviors. By modeling how security solutions and attacks influence the behavior of cyber-plexus, the resulting framework identifies gaps in the security of the system.
