Maximizing network security given a limited budget

  • Authors:
  • Nwokedi C. Idika;Brandeis H. Marshall;Bharat K. Bhargava

  • Affiliations:
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana;Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana;Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

  • Venue:
  • The Fifth Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference: Intellect, Initiatives, Insight, and Innovations
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

In order to safeguard an organization's networked assets, a network administrator must decide how to harden the network. To aid the decision-making process, network administrators may use attack graphs, which, through analysis, yield network hardening suggestions. A critical drawback of currently available analyses is the lack of consideration for the network administrator's defense budget. We overcome this shortcoming by modeling the problem of choosing security measures given a finite budget as a combinatorial optimization problem. We call this problem the Security Measures Choosing Problem (SMCP). Dynamic programming is used to provide optimal solutions.