Cybersecurity situational awareness taxonomy

Abstract

Ensuring cost-efficient cybersecurity for a networked system is a challenging task. In this task, cybersecurity situational awareness is a cornerstone to ensure that systems are protected in a meaningful way. However, cybersecurity situational awareness can be built in various ways. Firstly, several monitoring and analysing techniques can be applied, and secondly, a time window for the usage of situational awareness varies from short-term operational to long-term strategic decision making. Understanding differences and purposes of these aspects is an essential part to research and develop cybersecurity situational awareness. In this paper, we build a taxonomy of cybersecurity situational awareness. The taxonomy categorises terminology, makes it possible to recognise missing areas, and to understand the area in a uniform way. Moreover, the taxonomy helps to select the most effective techniques to be used in a specific situation awareness implementation.