Qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques for network security assessment

As attacks upon critical network infrastructures increase in complexity and destructiveness, new methods are needed to aid security administrators in protecting their networks. This paper describes a multistage attack modeling framework in which to explore new techniques for risk-based network security management. The multistage attack modeling foundation employs functional vulnerability specifications, object-oriented network models and attacker capability expressions to support compound vulnerability analysis. It is through this framework that we present quantitative and qualitative techniques for compound vulnerability risk assessment.