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

计算机用户越来越多地面临影响他们的个人隐私和他们管理的系统安全的决定。面对这些挑战的用户范围已经从计算的早期扩大到包括从家庭用户到大型企业网络管理员的每个人。隐私策略往往晦涩难懂，安全设置通常也很复杂。呈现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。在其他信息中，向她展示被要求做出的决定的后果是一个目前缺乏的必要组成部分。这项工作引入了正式论证作为一个框架，帮助用户就其计算机系统的安全性和其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，它提供了一种在面对不完整和不一致的信息时得出确凿结论的机制。它为向用户提供支持或反对某一立场的论点提供了基础，以及评估论点之间相互作用的结果的有充分依据的方法。一种优雅的论证理论已经发展出来，它基于描述论点之间关系的元规则。为医疗诊断等特定领域设计了论点构建和评估的规则。这个项目调查论证，以此为基础帮助用户对他们的计算机系统做出与安全和隐私相关的明智决定。三个具体目标是：1)实现使用论证进行推理的推理机；2)通过论证推理机、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前端得到增强。3)对于领域知识的一致性和完备性的原因，随着领域知识的演变而增强。为了了解所需的领域特定推理规则的种类，研究了不同的安全应用，例如确定攻击是否危及特定系统，找到攻击的根本原因，在存在攻击的不确定诊断的情况下决定要采取的适当行动，以及决定隐私设置。从这个项目中浮现出来的将是一个走向可用安全实践的原型。该团队正在与负责大型企业网络安全管理的组织合作，并将向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。正在开发和分享涵盖辩论和安全交叉的课程单元。

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.