SACURE: Situational Awareness for Cyber-secURity Evaluation and training

The Department of Defense and owners of large, commercial enterprise networks need excellent tools and well trained personnel to enforce cyber-security and counter cyber-attacks. This proposal focuses on supporting security personnel to have great Situational Awareness and training to help them use next generation cyber-security tools. In collaboration with University of Utah researchers with experience in cyber-security, interface design, and visualizations of large, heterogeneous data, we will develop and enhance many features of a next-generation cyber-security tool to improve analysts'and managers'performance. Our approach includes leveraging prior Cognitive Task Analyses of cyber-security personnel (1) to design interfaces that support personnel work-flow and (2) to provide visualizations of the networks that enable users to develop Situational Awareness of the security of their networks. We will create embedded assessment and training systems so that users can practice their capabilities before they must defend against real attacks. Our approach combines (a) existing CTA of cyber security personnel; (b) a state-of-the-art cyber-security tool that will be refined to enhance the capabilities of its users; (c) research-based design and visualization capabilities;(d) innovative user analysis methods; and (e) assessment and training systems that have been proven effective and efficient across many domains and applications.