Asset Criticality in Mission Reconfigurable Cyber Systems and its Contribution to Key Cyber Terrain

Abstract

The concept of a common operational picture has been utilized by the military for situational awareness in warfare domains for many years. With the emergence of cyberspace as a domain, there is a necessity to develop doctrine and tools to enable situational awareness for key-decision makers. Our study analyzes key elements that define cyber situational awareness to develop a methodology to identify assets within key cyber terrain, thus enabling situational awareness at the tactical level. For the purposes of this work, we treat critical assets to be key cyber terrain, given that no formal study has determined differences between asset criticality and key cyber terrain. Mission- and operationally- based questions are investigated to identify critical assets with the TOPSIS methodology. Results show that the ICS system can be evaluated using TOPSIS to identify critical assets contributing to key cyber terrain, enabling further research into other interconnected systems.