DIGITAL DEFENSE: VERIFICATION OF SECURITY INTELLIGENCE

Abstract: The basic objective of digital defense is to verify the security intelligence of a distributed computing system (DCS) so that the information and communication technology assets of an enterprise are protected from various types of malicious attacks. DCS performs key functions to provide essential services and commodities such as defense, energy, utilities, transportation and communication system of a country. It is a part of a nation’s critical infrastructure and operates with the support of industrial control systems, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), sensor networks, information and communication technologies. Distributed computing systems are potentially vulnerable to various types of malicious attacks which may affect the safety of common people and the performance of critical infrastructure seriously and may cause huge financial loss. The present work assesses the risk of different types of threats on DCS and presents a set of intelligent verification mechanisms which can protect the DCS from potential malicious attacks. The verification mechanisms are based on cryptography and distributed secure multi-party computation and check the security intelligence of the DCS from the perspectives of intrusion detection, secure communication, service oriented computing, credential based biometric access control, privacy and inference control. The work also explains the computational intelligence, simulation issues and key management associated with the verification mechanisms and suggests a roadmap for digital defense. An efficient DCS is expected to be a resilient system. The resiliency measures the ability to and the speed at which a DCS can return to normal performance level following a disruption. The vulnerability of a DCS to a disruptive event can be viewed as a combination of likelihood of a disruption and its potential severity.