An Empirical Paradigm on Cybersecurity Vulnerability Mitigation Framework

Abstract

Current cybersecurity vulnerability assessment tools were developed in accordance with guidelines established by entities like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the United States Department of Energy. When assessing their facility's cybersecurity maturity, owners and operators of critical infrastructure frequently use frameworks like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) and the cybersecurity capability maturity model (C2M2). These frameworks are great at finding vulnerabilities and doing qualitative cybersecurity analysis, but they don't help you get to the level of cybersecurity maturity you want by letting you prioritise how you fix those flaws. Cyber dangers pose a significant risk to businesses and are becoming more pervasive in our everyday lives. In this way, businesses may devise a strategy and set of guidelines by simulating a breach attack. But these strategies are based on experts' tacit knowledge. In response to this problem, the authors of this study suggest an automated and formal process for creating prioritised action plans to enhance environmental transparency. An experiment proving the validity of the proposed method was conducted, yielding consistent and applicable results to the tested scenario. Through testing against a real-world cyberattack that targeted industrial control systems at a critical infrastructure facility, this article presents a thorough architecture of CyFEr and demonstrates its application to CSF.