Title: A multi-objective search strategy to select optimal network hardening measures

Authors: Arkadeep Kundu; Soumya K. Ghosh

Addresses: School of Information Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, 721302, India ' School of Information Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, 721302, India

Abstract: Limited security budget and high system availability requirements pose challenges in selecting appropriate network security hardening measures for any organisational network. This article models the network hardening measure selection problem as a multi-objective optimisation problem with three objectives - minimising hardening cost, minimising security risk and maximise overall network accessibility. A multi-objective strategy search (MOSS) algorithm has been proposed to select the best set of security hardening actions by optimising all three objectives. This process helps network administrators to select the best network security configuration, to be deployed, under resource constrained environments.

Keywords: security management; network hardening; decision support; security risks; multi-objective optimisation; network security; organisational networks; resource constraints.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDSS.2015.067283

International Journal of Decision Support Systems, 2015 Vol.1 No.1, pp.130 - 148

Received: 19 Oct 2013
Accepted: 24 May 2014
Published online: 18 Mar 2015 *

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