An n-sided polygonal model to calculate the impact of cyber security events
This provides a method for cybersecurity analysts to visually represent and assess event impacts, but it appears incremental as it adapts existing multi-criteria and geometric techniques to this domain.
The paper tackles the problem of quantifying and comparing the impact of cybersecurity events by proposing an n-sided polygonal model that uses geometric operations to compute size metrics like length, perimeter, and surface area, with a case study illustrating its application.
This paper presents a model to represent graphically the impact of cyber events (e.g., attacks, countermeasures) in a polygonal systems of n-sides. The approach considers information about all entities composing an information system (e.g., users, IP addresses, communication protocols, physical and logical resources, etc.). Every axis is composed of entities that contribute to the execution of the security event. Each entity has an associated weighting factor that measures its contribution using a multi-criteria methodology named CARVER. The graphical representation of cyber events is depicted as straight lines (one dimension) or polygons (two or more dimensions). Geometrical operations are used to compute the size (i.e, length, perimeter, surface area) and thus the impact of each event. As a result, it is possible to identify and compare the magnitude of cyber events. A case study with multiple security events is presented as an illustration on how the model is built and computed.