Dynamic Risk Assessment in Cybersecurity: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Traditional information security risk assessment (RA) methodologies and standards, adopted by information security management systems and frameworks as a foundation stone towards robust environments, face many difficulties in modern environments where the threat landscape changes rapidly and new vulnerabilities are being discovered. In order to overcome this problem, dynamic risk assessment (DRA) models have been proposed to continuously and dynamically assess risks to organisational operations in (near) real time. The aim of this work is to analyse the current state of DRA models that have been proposed for cybersecurity, through a systematic literature review. The screening process led us to study 50 DRA models, categorised based on the respective primary analysis methods they used. The study provides insights into the key characteristics of these models, including the maturity level of the examined models, the domain or application area in which these models flourish, and the information they utilise in order to produce results. The aim of this work is to answer critical research questions regarding the development of dynamic risk assessment methodologies and provide insights on the already developed methods as well as future research directions.

Bridging the Cyber–Physical Divide: A Novel Approach for Quantifying and Visualising the Cyber Risk of Physical Assets

“…Whilst this score can be informed by any metrics that may provide insight into the possibility of cyber compromise, the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) described in Section 1 is recommended [34], as it is an existing scoring system that is used extensively in the literature [36][37][38][39] and industry [40]. As mentioned in Section 1, CVSS scores range from zero to ten and take account of a range of factors related to vulnerability and impact in the cyber domain.…”

An Integrated Approach to Cyber Risk Management with Cyber Threat Intelligence Framework to Secure Critical Infrastructure

“…Cyber risk assessment can produce overwhelming security weaknesses and corresponding remediations for an organization to implement, making the remediation plan overwhelming. Considering adversaries' techniques and tactics can improve the risk assessment output regarding results, prioritization of security controls, and proactive response to emerging threats [14]. This paper's novelty and contribution lie in its proposal for enhancements through the continuous integration of cyber threat intelligence into an existing cyber risk management framework.…”

“…Integrating cyber threat intelligence into risk management is still uncommon, and there is a need for systematic approaches to incorporate threat intelligence feeds effectively [10,13]. Existing frameworks often struggle to adapt to the dynamic threat landscape, highlighting the importance of considering adversary techniques for proactive risk mitigation [14,52].…”