General Requirements of a Hybrid-Modeling Framework for Cyber Security

Understanding human dynamics of cyber security is a critical step for enhancing situation awareness of analysts. To this end, in this paper we focus on the requirements for building a comprehensive model of cyber analyst´s decision making processes: we embrace an approach that leverages on cognitive aspects and knowledge representation to define the core elements of such model. In particular, we make the case for investigating the interplay between ontological underpinnings of cyber security and cognitive mechanisms of decision making in cyber operations. We claim that, by integrating ontologies and cognitive architectures in a hybrid-modeling framework, it´s possible to rigorously characterize and simulate the core structures that govern the decisions of defenders and attackers and mediate interactions among them in the cyberspace.