An Experimental Approach for Estimating Cyber Risk: a Proposal Building upon Cyber Ranges and Capture the Flags

Abstract

Current approaches to estimate the risk of compromise are based on either historical data or pure technical assessments, such as the number and severity of vulnerabilities in the target network. We propose a novel experimental approach for estimating the risk of compromise based on experimental data, as opposed to observational data, by leveraging on cyber ranges and capture the flag exercises. We identify the key design principles in terms of response and explanatory variables, specification of how they can be measured, and the overall block design from related experiments and approaches as well as assess their suitability and limitations.