CT-ER: Collaborative Research: MiMANSaS: Metrics, Models and Analysis of Network Security and Survivability

信息和通信技术(ICT)基础设施故障和网络攻击是可能产生灾难性社会影响的现实。信息保障(IA)可以被定义为通过确保信息和通信技术系统的可靠性和安全性来保护和保卫这些系统而采取的行动。迫切需要有系统的信息和通信技术方法，使信息和通信技术系统能够适应并经受住任何类型的破坏或攻击。IA技术发展的一个主要障碍是缺乏能够确定IA机制有效性的模型和指标。这一探索性项目是不同机构--杜克大学、密苏里大学堪萨斯城分校和匹兹堡大学--的三个个人投资机构之间的合作努力的种子，他们专注于开发指标和模型，使人们能够定量研究信息和通信技术基础设施的网络组成部分的信息保证(IA)的技术方面。该方法的基础是将攻击树、攻击图、特权图和故障树统一到一个公共的可伸缩框架中，并定义了一套良好的度量和应用场景。对基本模型的扩展正在研究中，该模型包括状态信息、随机属性和通过马尔可夫链和随机Petri网获得的奖励，从而能够实现更广泛的攻击和故障场景。开发的模型和指标的影响是，它们提供了必要的技术和工具，以确定信息安全机制的有效性，并使人们能够发现瓶颈并评估信息保障水平、性能和成本之间的权衡。

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure failures and cyber attacks are realities that can have catastrophic societal effects. Information Assurance (IA) can be defined as the operations undertaken to protect and defend ICT systems by ensuring their dependability and security. There is a critical need for systematic IA methods that enable ICT systems to adapt and survive any type of disruption or attack. A major hurdle in the development of IA techniques is the lack of models and metrics which enable one to determine the effectiveness of IA mechanisms. This exploratory project seeds a collaborative effort between three PIs at different institutions: Duke University, University of Missouri Kansas-City, and the University of Pittsburgh focused on the development of metrics and models that will allow one to quantitatively study the technical aspects of information assurance (IA) for the network component of the ICT infrastructure. The basis of the approach is to unify attack trees, attack graphs, privilege graphs and fault trees into a common scalable framework with a well defined set of metrics and application scenarios. Extensions of the basic model that include state information, stochastic properties and rewards via Markov chains and stochastic Petri nets, enabling a wider variety of attack and fault scenarios are being studied. The impact of the models and metrics developed is that they provide the techniques and tools necessary to determine the effectiveness of IA mechanisms and allow one to detect bottlenecks and to evaluate the tradeoffs between levels of information assurance, performance and cost.