Asset information obtained via infrastructure analysis is essential for developing and establishing risk management. However, information about assets acquired by existing infrastructure analysis processes is often incomplete or lacking in detail, especially concerning their interconnected topology. In this paper, we present the Interconnected-asset Ontology, IO, as a step towards a standardized representation of detailed asset information. The utilization of an asset ontology as a machine-readable representation supports the automation of risk management processes and the standardization of asset information reduces redundant acquisition processes that are often found in practice.

Security testing of IT-infrastructure in a production environment can have a negative impact on business processes supported by IT-assets. A testbed can be used to provide an alternate testing environment in order to mitigate this impact. Unfortunately, for small and medium enterprises, maintaining a physical testbed and its consistency with the production environment is a cost-intensive task. In this paper, we present the Infrastructure Replication Process (IRP) and a corresponding Topology Editor, to provide a cost-efficient method that makes security testing in small and medium enterprises more feasible. We utilize a virtual environment as a testbed and provide a structured approach that takes into account the differences between a physical and a virtual environment. Open standards, such as SCAP, OVAL or XCCDF, and the utilization the Interconnectedasset Ontology-IO-support the integration of the IRP into existing (automated) processes. We use the implementation of a prototype to present a proof-of-concept that shows how typical challenges regarding security testing can be successfully mitigated via the IRP.

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Ethernet-based networks for Industrial Control Systems (ICS) rely on redundant links to mitigate failures, to increase availability, but also masking failures and complicating assessment of redundancy remaining. We use the Interconnected-asset Ontology to represent topologies from automated snapshots without the need for changes infrastructure or fundamental operation of the ICS network. The presented approach and prototype provides assessments seamlessly integrated in a state-of-the-art industrial control system

Identifying and locating root cause failures in virtual networks via active probing is a complex and repetitive task. Automation of this procedure requires a machine-processable representation that is not only capable of expressing the composition of physical network topologies but also the virtual networks supported by them. In this paper, we present an extension of the Interconnected-asset Ontology that allows to represent nested virtual networks. This extended representation is used to automatically generate sets of active probes that analyze the state of network paths. A proof-of-concept implementation is applied in the production network of a wide area network service provider. The corresponding evaluation shows that our approach is viable and can streamline the process significantly