Biblio

Performance measures commonly used in systems security engineering tend to be static, linear, and have limited utility in addressing challenges to security performance from increasingly complex risk environments, adversary innovation, and disruptive technologies. Leveraging key concepts from resilience science offers an opportunity to advance next-generation systems security engineering to better describe the complexities, dynamism, and nonlinearity observed in security performance—particularly in response to these challenges. This article introduces a multilayer network model and modified Continuous Time Markov Chain model that explicitly captures interdependencies in systems security engineering. The results and insights from a multilayer network model of security for a hypothetical nuclear power plant introduce how network-based metrics can incorporate resilience concepts into performance metrics for next generation systems security engineering.

Existing security models are highly linear and fail to capture the rich interactions that occur across security technology, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and human/organizational components. In this work, we will leverage insights from resilience science, complex system theory, and network theory to develop a next-generation security model based on these interactions to address challenges in complex, nonlinear risk environments and against innovative and disruptive technologies. Developing such a model is a key step forward toward a dynamic security paradigm (e.g., shifting from detection to anticipation) and establishing the foundation for designing next-generation physical security systems against evolving threats in uncontrolled or contested operational environments.