International Journal On Cyber Situational Awareness (IJCSA)
ISSN: (Print) 2057-2182 ISSN: (Online) 2057-2182
DOI: 10.22619/IJCSA
Published Semi-annually. Est. 2014
Editor-in-Chief:
Dr Cyril Onwubiko, Chair – Cyber Security & Intelligence, E-Security Group, Research Series, London, UK; IEEE UK & Ireland Section Secretary
Associate Editors:
Professor Frank Wang, Head of School / Professor of Future Computing, Chair IEEE Computer Society, UK&RI, School of Computing, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
Professor Karen Renaud, Professor of Cyber Security, University of Abertay, Dundee, Scotland, UK
A blueprint and proof-of-concept for a national cyber security sensor network
Florian Skopik and Stefan Filip
Abstract:
The timely exchange of information on new threats and vulnerabilities has become a cornerstone of effective cyber defence in recent years. Especially national authorities increasingly assume their role as information brokers through national cyber security centres and distribute warnings on new attack vectors and vital recommendations on how to mitigate them. Although many of these initiatives are effective to some degree, they also suffer from severe limitations. Many steps in the exchange process require extensive human involvement to manually review, vet, enrich, analyse and distribute security information. Some countries have therefore started to adopt distributed cyber security sensor networks to enable the automatic collection, analysis and preparation of security data and thus effectively overcome limiting scalability factors. The basic idea of IoC-centric cyber security sensor networks is that the national authorities distribute Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) to organizations and receive sightings in return. This effectively helps them to estimate the spreading of malware, anticipate further trends of spreading and derive vital findings for decision makers. While this application case seems quite simple, there are some tough questions to be answered in advance, which steer the further design decisions: How much can the monitored organization be trusted to be a partner in the search for malware? How much control of the scanning process should be delegated to the organization? What is the right level of search depth? How to deal with confidential indicators? What can be derived from encrypted traffic? How are new indicators distributed, prioritized, and scan targets selected in a scalable manner? What is a good strategy to re-schedule scans to derive meaningful data on trends, such as rate of spreading? This paper suggests a blueprint for a sensor network and raises related questions, outlines design principles, and discusses lessons learned from small-scale pilots.
Keywords: cyber security sensor networks, indicator of compromise, indicator distribution, design principles, proof-of-concept, national cyber security
ISSN: 2057-2182
Volume 4. No. 1
DOI: 10.22619/IJCSA.2019.100129
Date: Dec. 2019
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Skopik, F. & Filip, S. (2019). A blueprint and proof-of-concept for a national cyber security sensor network. International Journal on Cyber Situational Awareness, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp155-184.