TC: Small: Collaborative Research: An Argumentation-based Framework for Security Management

计算机用户越来越多地面临着影响他们个人隐私和他们管理的系统安全的决策。面临这些挑战的用户范围已经从早期的计算扩展到包括从家庭用户到大型企业网络管理员的所有人。隐私策略通常很模糊，安全设置通常很复杂。提供给用户的选项中缺少一个决策支持机制，该机制可以帮助用户做出明智的选择。除了其他信息外，向她介绍被要求作出的决定的后果是目前缺乏的必要组成部分。这项工作引入了正式的论证作为一个框架，帮助用户对他们的计算机系统的安全性和他们的电子存储信息的隐私做出明智的决定。论证是一门成熟的理论学科，在面对不完整和不一致的信息时，它提供了一种得出确凿结论的机制。它提供了向用户展示支持或反对某一立场的论据的基础，以及评估论据之间相互作用的结果的有充分根据的方法。一种优雅的论证理论是基于描述论证之间关系的元规则发展起来的。已经为特定领域（如医疗诊断）设计了论证构建和评价规则。这个项目调查论证作为帮助用户对他们的计算机系统做出明智的安全和隐私相关决策的基础。有三个具体目标：1)实现使用论证推理的推理引擎；2)通过论证推理引擎、专门用于安全管理的规则库和提供安全警报的传感器来促进安全管理，所有这些都通过交互式前端进行了增强。3)随着领域知识的发展，对其一致性和完整性进行推理。为了理解所需的特定于领域的推理规则类型，我们研究了不同的安全应用程序，例如确定攻击是否危及特定系统、查找攻击的根本原因、在存在不确定的攻击诊断时决定采取适当的行动，以及决定隐私设置。从这个项目中出现的将是可用安全性实践的原型。该团队正在与负责大型企业网络安全管理的组织合作，并将为这些组织提供原型工具。该团队正在与来自不同社区成员的日常用户合作。涵盖论证和安全交叉的课程模块正在开发和共享。

Computer users are increasingly faced with decisions that impact their personal privacy and the security of the systems they manage. The range of users confronting these challenges has broadened from the early days of computing to include everyone from home users to administrators of large enterprise networks. Privacy policies are frequently obscure, and security settings are typically complex. Missing from the options presented to a user is a decision support mechanism that can assist her in making informed choices. Being presented with the consequences of decisions she is asked to make, among other information, is a necessary component that is currently lacking.This work introduces formal argumentation as a framework for helping users make informed decisions about the security of their computer systems and the privacy of their electronically stored information. Argumentation, a mature theoretical discipline, provides a mechanism for reaching substantiated conclusions when faced with incomplete and inconsistent information. It provides the basis for presenting arguments to a user for or against a position, along with well-founded methods for assessing the outcome of interactions among the arguments. An elegant theory of argumentation has been developed based on meta rules characterizing relationships between arguments. Rules for argument construction and evaluation have been devised for specific domains such as medical diagnosis. This project investigates argumentation as the basis for helping users make informed security- and privacy-related decisions about their computer systems. Three specific aims are addressed:1) Implementation of an inference engine that reasons using argumentation,2) Facilitate security management through an argumentation inference engine, a rule base specialized for security management, and sensors providing security alerts all enhanced with an interactive front-end.3) Reason about the consistency and completeness of domain knowledge, as it evolves.To understand the kinds of domain-specific inference rules required, diverse security applications are studied, such as determining if an attack imperils a particular system, finding the root cause of an attack, deciding on appropriate actions to take in the presence of an uncertain diagnosis of an attack, and deciding on privacy settings. Emerging from this project will be a prototype towards the practice of usable security. The team is working with organizations responsible for the security administration of large enterprise networks and will make the prototype tools available to these organizations. The team is working with everyday users from a cross-section of community members. Curricular modules that cover the intersection of argumentation and security are being developed and shared.