A Compositional Foundation of Cybersecurity
Abstract
Security engineering has shifted from the paradigm of securing a list of assets to defending interconnected graphs. In this new paradigm, security researchers have employed higher-order graphs, such as metagraphs and directed hypergraphs (DH), where nodes represent sets of elements, and directed edges connect these sets, to model security problems across various areas of cybersecurity. Although tools and software for building these higher-order graph models are becoming available, they are still ad-hoc and specialized forspecific domains. Our work aims to use category theory to develop a generic algebraic foundation for these higher-order security graphs and the underlying cybersecurity problems. The outcomes are twofold: (1) a software implementation of directed hypergraph category formulations and their associated algorithms in Python, and (2) example use cases demonstrating the application of directed hypergraph categories to model Active Directory security and cyber defense course-of-action planning.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 10, 2025
- Source ID
- N629092512041
Entities
People
- Dale Godfrey
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Adelaide