Breakout Discussion III: Creating Future Research Directions

Group Exercise: for each of the subareas, state the importance/motivation, and key additional issues/questions to be considered for future projects.

Area 1: Security Configuration Assurability: Top-down Approach

  1. Declarative languages
  2. Abstract models and languages for configuration specification
  3. Formal semantics of security policies /map policies to configuration
  4. Change management
  5. Design for flexibility and manageability – clean slate approach

Questions for Area 1

  • How can automate the creation of the security architecture ?
  • How can host and network be integrated transparently?
  • Can security misconfiguration be identified and fixed before and after the attack automatically?
  • How to assess self-configured, context-aware, dynamic configuration trends?

Area 2: Security Configuration Assurability: Bottom-up Approach

  1. Integrating network and host configuration
  2. Configuration/misconfiguration visualization
  3. Configuration reasoning and conflict analysis
  4. Protecting the privacy and integrity of security configuration
  5. Automatic generation of security configuration architectures
  6. Design for flexibility and manageability – clean slate approach

Questions for Area 2

  • How can host and network be integrated transparently?
  • Can security misconfiguration be identified and fixed before and after the attack automatically?
  • Is the security configuration is secure? What integrity and privacy attacks can be lunched against it?
  • How to assess self-configured, context-aware, dynamic configuration trends?

Area 3: Measurable and Automated Security Management

  1. Metrics for measuring assurability and usability: Usable security often involves trade offs between security or privacy and usability/utility
  2. Reasoning about uncertainly in configuration management
  3. Representation of belief, trust, and risk in security policies
  4. Balancing security, flexibility and performance
  5. Risk adaptive (or context-aware) configuration systems

Questions for Area 3

  • Can configuration assurability and usability be measured?
  • How to balance security, flexibility, and performance?
  • How to enable Risk-aware configuration?

Area 4: Usable Security Configuration

  1. Configuration testing, debugging and evaluation
  2. Automated alarm management
  3. Policy configuration visualization
  4. Automated forensics and mitigation
  5. Automated signature and patch management

Questions for Area 4

  • How do these differences affect the (perception of) usability of the security mechanisms and tools?
  • How to assess self-configured, context-aware, dynamic configuration trends? Where is the boundary between the end-users/security professionals and the system control?