Supporting threat analysis through description logic reasoning

This paper describes an existing proof-of-concept prototype of an automated reasoning service exploiting ontologies expressed in description logic to support the intelligence staff in detecting and categorizing threats. The key concepts of threat analysis are first presented and they are then organized into a reasoning framework. The development of a suitable ontology for threat analysis is discussed, along with the main aspects of automated reasoning with description logic, including the inference of characteristics and object properties, and the use of the Semantic Web Rule Language. A simple “academic” situation example is provided to illustrate the material being discussed, and the description logic reasoning service exploiting the threat analysis ontology is briefly presented.