Operationalizing cybersecurity knowledge: Design, implementation & evaluation of a knowledge management system for CACAO playbooks

Abstract

Modern cybersecurity threats are growing in complexity, targeting increasingly intricate and interconnected systems. To effectively defend against these evolving threats, security teams utilize automation and orchestration to enhance response efficiency and consistency. In that sense, cybersecurity playbooks and workflows are key enablers, as they provide a structured, reusable, and continuously evolving approach to incident response. They enable organizations to codify requirements, operational domain expertise, underlying organizational policies, regulatory obligations, and best practices. Moreover, playbooks enhance and standardize the decision-making process, while allowing automation in areas where reliability is sufficiently established to ensure that mission assurance is not compromised. The emerging Collaborative Automated Course of Action Operations (CACAO) technical specification and standard defines a common machine-processable schema for cybersecurity playbooks, facilitating interoperability for their exchange and ensuring the ability to orchestrate and automate cybersecurity operations. However, despite its potential and the fact that it is a relatively new standardization effort, there is a lack of tools to support its adoption, particularly in the management and lifecycle development of CACAO playbooks, which limits their practical deployment. Motivated by the above, this work presents the design, development, and evaluation of a Knowledge Management System (KMS) for managing CACAO cybersecurity playbooks throughout their lifecycle. It provides essential tools to improve cybersecurity maturity, strengthens collaboration and coordination within and across organizations, and streamlines playbook management. By utilizing open-source technologies and open standards, the proposed approach promotes interoperability and enhances the usability of state-of-the-art cybersecurity orchestration and automation primitives. To encourage adoption, the resulting implementation is released as open-source, which, to the best of our knowledge, comprises the first publicly available and documented work in this domain, supporting the broader uptake of CACAO playbooks and promoting the widespread use of interoperable automation and orchestration mechanisms in cybersecurity operations.