| abstract: |
Information security threats to organisations have changed completely over the last decade, due to the complexity and dynamic nature of infrastructures and attacks. Successful attacks cost society billions a year, impacting vital services and the economy. Examples include StuxNet, using infected USB sticks to sabotage nuclear plants, and the DigiNotar attack, using fake certificates to spy on website traffic. New attacks cleverly exploit multiple organisational vulnerabilities, involving physical security and human behaviour. Defenders need to make rapid decisions regarding which attacks to block, as both infrastructure and attacker knowledge are constantly evolving.
Current risk management methods provide descriptive tools for assessing threats by systematic brainstorming. In today’s dynamic attack landscape, however, this process is too slow and exceeds the limits of human imaginative capability. Emerging security risks demand an extension of established methods with an analytical approach to predict, prioritize, and prevent complex attacks. The TREsPASS project develops quantitative and organisation-specific means to achieve this in complex socio-technical environments. The iterative, tool-supported framework:
• Represents the structure of complex organisations as socio-technical security models, integrating social and technical viewpoints;
• Predicts socio-technical attacks, prioritises them based on their risk, and assesses the aggregated effect of preventive measures;
• Presents results to enable quick understanding and updating of the current security posture.
By integrating European expertise on socio-technical security into a widely applicable and standardised framework, TREsPASS will reduce security incidents in Europe, and allow organisations and their customers to make informed decisions about security investments. This increased resilience of European businesses both large and small is vital to safeguarding the social and economic prospects of Europe. |
