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Home > CIIMA > Vol. 17 (2019) > Iss. 1

 

Communications of the IIMA

TOPICS DISTRIBUTION OF CYBERSECURITY TAXONOMIES: A SURVEY OF SURVEYS AND A CONTENT ANALYSIS

Abstract

Concepts and terms are always considered to be most critical for a fundamental understanding of the theories and practices of information technology in cybersecurity communities in both professionals and academics. The concepts and terms used for information technology (IT) in cybersecurity communities are dynamic with changing vocabularies over time. So, there is an ongoing need for building and updating taxonomies for different applications and implementations of information technology in cybersecurity, because they enable clearer communication and common understanding of cybersecurity terms, through the use of language and annotations on the definitions. Developing a taxonomy for a specific subject area has been a common practice in both natural science and social science, because a taxonomy could provide a consistent categorization of terms and concepts across multiple sources and channels. Taxonomies were useful and helpful for librarians to define and organize and retrieve information content effectively and efficiently. Many scholars and researchers have done interesting works in this area. For example, Arvisson (2018) built a taxonomy of the computer security incident related terminology. Buch & Bhatt (2018) compiled a taxonomy on cloud computing security issues at virtualization layer. Chen et. al. (2018) studied Internet-of-Things security and vulnerabilities in terms of taxonomy, challenges and practice. Gupta and Badve (2017) built a taxonomy of DoS and DDoS attacks and desirable defense mechanism in a cloud computing environment. Hansman (2003) developed a taxonomy of network and computer attack methodologies. Jakobsson (2017) built a threat taxonomy as a working framework to describe cyber attacks. Zheng, et al. (2018) studied cybersecurity research datasets for taxonomy and empirical analysis. Harris and Pattern (2015) did a very interesting project of using Bloom's and Webb's taxonomies to integrate emerging cybersecurity topics into a computing curriculum. Furthermore, scholars and researchers have conducted surveys on taxonomies developed for different topics in various areas of cybersecurity. Ahmad et. al. (2012) have done a survey on taxonomies of attacks and vulnerabilities in computer systems. Joshi, Singh and Tarey (2015) offered a detailed review of significant work done in development of taxonomies of attacks and vulnerability present in computer and network system. Naeimi, et. al. (2012) conducted a survey on the taxonomy of cluster-based routing protocols for homogeneous wireless sensor networks. As shown by the examples above, these scholars and researchers have done very well in surveying and analyzing specific taxonomies developed for a certain area in cybersecurity. But, few of them have paid attention to survey as many taxonomies as possible. Such a lack of work calls for a survey of surveys to study the development of taxonomies in a variety of cybersecurity areas, from the very specific areas such as “hardware trojan” and “DDoS attacks” to very general areas such as “cyber-attacks” and “security threats”.

Based on the above literature review, this proposed study conducts a survey of surveys of existing cybersecurity taxonomies, presents a comparative content analysis on the topic distribution of the surveyed taxonomies via articles and papers dealing with a variety of subject areas, and provides a better understanding of cybersecurity terminology management for both business practitioners and academic educators. By identifying and categorizing these subject areas and topics, this paper will answer the following questions:

1) How many cybersecurity taxonomies have been developed?

2) What are the topics covered by the developed cybersecurity taxonomies?

3) Which topics are more popular in the cybersecurity taxonomies?

4) Which topics are less popular in the cybersecurity taxonomies?

5) What topics are not covered by the present cybersecurity taxonomies, and need to be developed in the future? 6) What kind of complementary taxonomies for cybersecurity education in universities and colleges are needed? In order to answer the above research questions, we would adopt the following steps as our research methodology:

• Firstly, we collected articles and papers that are specifically deal with cybersecurity taxonomies.

• Secondly, we identified all the cybersecurity topics covered in the collected taxonomies.

• Thirdly, we identified the cybersecurity topics that are more popular in the taxonomies.

• Fourthly, we identified the cybersecurity topics that are less popular in the taxonomies.

• Finally, we compare these cybersecurity topics with the CAE-CD Knowledge Units (KUs) and NICE framework (NICCS, 2019).

Based on the answers to the above questions, this research will make some recommendations on how to develop a comprehensive taxonomy for cybersecurity education covering both fundamental terms and concepts and practical skills that meet the needs of employers in the real world. The significance of this research is two-fold: it not only provides the first-hand findings on how many cybersecurity taxonomies have been developed, and what are the more or less popular cybersecurity topics in the developed cybersecurity taxonomies, but also presents a better understanding of cybersecurity terminology management for both business practitioners and academic educators in cybersecurity.

References:

• Ahmed, M., & Litchfield, A. T. (2018). Taxonomy for identification of security issues in cloud computing environments. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 58(1), 79-88.

• Chen, K., Zhang, S., Li, Z., Zhang, Y., Deng, Q., Ray, S., & Jin, Y. (2018). Internet-of-Things Security and Vulnerabilities: Taxonomy, Challenges, and Practice. Journal of Hardware and Systems Security, 2(2), 97-110.

• Buch, B. & Bhatt, H. (2018). Taxonomy on Cloud Computing Security Issues at Virtualization Layer. International Journal of Advanced Research in Engineering and Technology (IJARET), 9(4), 50-76.

• Gupta, B. B., & Badve, O. P. (2017). Taxonomy of DoS and DDoS attacks and desirable defense mechanism in a cloud computing environment. Neural Computing and Applications, 28(12), 3655-3682.

• Harris, M. A. & Pattern, K. P. (2015). Using Bloom's and Webb's Taxonomies to Integrate Emerging Cybersecurity Topics into a Computing Curriculum. Journal of Information Systems Education, 26(3), 219-234.

• Jakobsson, M. (2017, July 24). The Threat Taxonomy: A Working Framework to Describe Cyber Attacks. Retrieved May 14, 2019, from https://www.agari.com/email-security-blog/threat-taxonomy-framework- cyber-attacks/

• Joshi, C., Singh, U. K., & Tarey, K. (2015). A Review on Taxonomies of Attacks and Vulnerability in Computer and Network System. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering, 5(1).

• Naeimi, S., Ghafghazi, H., Chow, C. O., & Ishii, H. (2012). A survey on the taxonomy of cluster-based routing protocols for homogeneous wireless sensor networks. Sensors, 12(6), 7350-7409.

• NICCS (National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers & Studies). (2019, February 21). Explore Terms: A Glossary of Common Cybersecurity Terminology. Retrieved May 14, 2019, from https://niccs.us- cert.gov/about-niccs/glossary

• Tehranipoor, M., & Koushanfar, F. (2010). A survey of hardware trojan taxonomy and detection. IEEE design & test of computers, 27(1), 10-25.

• Zheng, M., Robbins, H., Chai, Z., Thapa, P., & Moore, T. (2018). Cybersecurity research datasets: taxonomy and empirical analysis. In 11th {USENIX} Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test ({CSET} 18)

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