Cyber Vulnerability Assessment via Semantic Reasoning, and Tiered Visualization (CELESTE)

Security Operation Centers (SOC) play a pivotal role in Information Technology (IT) systems and the cybersecurity landscape. SOCs deploy an array of security measures, from antiviruses and lockdown systems to intrusion detection systems (IDS) and meticulous network traffic monitoring. Each tool is designed to target specific aspects of the cybersecurity threat landscape. Despite the arsenal of tools at their disposal, SOCs face a fundamental challenge: the interactions between these defenses and their cumulative impact on security are not systematically explored or understood. The complexity and diversity of cyber threats demand a more integrated approach to security. This need has highlighted a significant gap in the cyber reasoning and visualization of how various cyber defenses correlate within the entire spectrum of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, as well as their collective efficacy against known and future vulnerabilities and threats.The CELESTE effort will result in the system design of a semantic representation architecture, initial prototype visualization for proof-of-concept based on semantic representation and reasoning, and a demonstration of the CELESTE initial prototype. The CELESTE prototype integrates semantic representation, reasoning, and visualization components into workflows compatible and interoperable with current and future defense tools deployed in the Security Operation Centers (SOC). In addition to the prototype & product as an entirety, the CELESTE components and capabilities can be adapted to interoperate with various reasoning and defense tools as well as visualization techniques, made available from the open-source community, other performers, or transition targets.