Decision-theoretic approach to designing cyber resilient systems
Vineet Mehta, Paul D. Rowe, Gene Lewis, Ashe Magalhaes, Mykel J. Kochenderfer · 2016
The increasing number of persistent attacks on computing systems has inspired considerable research in cyber resilience solutions. Resilient system designers seek objective approaches to aid in the comparison and selection of effective solutions. Decision theoretic techniques such as Markov decision processes can be leveraged for such comparisons and design decisions. Markov decision processes facilitate examination of uncertainty in system dynamics, diversity of responses, and optimization for operational objectives. This paper proposes a system design approach based in decision theory to achieve effective cyber resilience solutions. The prototypical example of a system with network intrusion detection and host reconstitution is used to illustrate this approach and highlight difficulties designers face due to the non-trivial coupling that may arise between response mechanisms.