The Defenders: Proposal Version 1

Back to Project Home

Proposal

Poster

Application

Research Paper

INTRODUCTION

The internet has become an indispensable tool in today’s business world. While it has fostered a tremendous amount of economic growth, it also introduced a series of profound vulnerabilities with a multitude of impacts: socially, economically and/or invading the privacy of an individual or organizations. In 2017, attacks can total up to $600 billion dollars, this alarming number has caught the world’s attention. It is believed that attackers will become increasingly creative with attack methods and increasingly destructive payloads that better target system vulnerabilities, with the luxury of anonymity and time.

MOTIVATION

Cyber-attacks have made its way up to being one of the top 5 risk to global stability, amongst natural disasters, extreme weather, data fraud, and failure to address climate change. “Another growing trend is the use of cyberattacks to target critical infrastructure and strategic industrial sectors, raising fears that, in a worst-case scenario, attackers could trigger a breakdown in the systems that keep societies functioning. Over the years, there has been a shift from profit-motivated attacks to ones that aim to cause massive disruptions, such as the WannaCry ransomware campaign. Not knowing why or when attacks will strike, countries are left unprotected and unprepared.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

• Understand and analyse the distribution of the Types, Sources and Impact of Breaches globally
• Understand the relationship between who's the culprit(source) and why did he do it(type)
• Compare the nature and impact of instances of reported breaches between countries
• Compare breaches between countries over time

SELECTED DATASET

1.Breach Level Index
Source : Gemalto, the world leader in digital security.
Purpose : Dataset is designed to provide a simple way to input publicly disclosed information on data breaches and calculate a score indicating breach severity. (https://breachlevelindex.com/)
1. Organization Breached 2. Number of Records Breached 3. Date of Breach: 01/01/2013 - 29/06/2018 4. Type of Breach -Nuisance (Email, Addresses, Affiliation) -Account Access (Username, Passwords to websites/ social media) -Financial Access (Bank Account Credentials) -Identity Theft ( Information can be used to masquerade someone) -Existential Data ( Info can be used to threaten business survival) 5. Source of Breach: -Lost Device -Stolen Device -Malicious Insider -Malicious Outsider -State Espionage 6. Location: Country 7. Industry: -Technology, Other, Retail, Government, Healthcare, Education -Financial, Social Media, Hospitality, Entertainment, Insurance -Non-profit, Industrial, Professional Services 8. Risk Score: Log 10 ( Type of Data * Source of Breach * Whether Action was taken)

BACKGROUND SURVEY OF RELATED WORKS

STORYBOARD

Sketches	Description (Possible users: Security management personnel from multinational corporations or governmental organization, who wishes to examine if their current effort and resources devoted to preventing cyber attacks are justified and effective as compared to other organizations of similar characteristics.)
	Breach Overview Calendar Heatmap To display time series data of the security breaches over the years, through a calendar heat map, by their respective industries. This way we can observe any spikes or anomalies within the same time period, across the different industries and take possible precautions for the future. Wouldn't it be interesting if we are able to spot correlations between the intended industry and the time of attack? Technique: Filter Choose from dropdown box according to the industry to be visualised. Technique: Tooltip Mouse over to observe the details of the day, ie the number of records breached.
	Boxplot between type and source of breach To understand across industries, what are the distribution of the types and sources of breaches, measured by the risk score or the number of records breached. Ever wondered for the healthcare industry, how susceptible are you to breaches used for financial access? The risk score shows you the extent of damage the risk could create, so that you can better prioritize on the attacks you want to defend yourself against. Technique: Filter Toggle between source or type of breach to observe the risk scores or number of records breached accordingly and choose the appropriate year from the slider or the desired industry Technique: Tooltip Mouse over to observe the details of individual records on the boxplot.
	Distribution of breaches Source of breach over types of breach scatterplot. Distribution of the sources of attacks for each type of attacks and vice versa. Every wondered behind every breach used for financial gains, is it more likely to be done by a malicious insider or outsider? Technique: Tooltip Mouse over to observe the details of individual records
	Risk Comparison Treemap To understand in greater detail the characteristics of breaches affecting each country. Which industry is most threatened by breaches in a country and what are the causes of these breaches? Compare alone or between countries to gain more insights about the above! Technique: Filter a) Radio button to filter by source or type of breach at the first layer b) Toggle which countries and/or continents to select for comparison c) Slider to select time period to be observed Technique: Tooltip Tooltip when hovering the mouse over to show: Type of Breach Type of Industry Source of Breach Number of Records lost Risk Score

ARCHITECTURE DIAGRAM

KEY TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

PROJECT TIMELINE

REFERENCES

1. https://www.csa.gov.sg/news/press-releases/cyber-threats-in-singapore-grew-in-2017-mirroring-global-trends
2. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/cyber-threats-singapore-go-phishing-attacks-see-biggest-jump
3. https://www.mcafee.com/enterprise/en-us/solutions/lp/economics-cybercrime.html
4. http://bl.ocks.org/mthh/7e17b680b35b83b49f1c22a3613bd89f
5. http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/guests/intro_to_cycle_plots.pdf

Data Sources:
http://hdr.undp.org/en/data#
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/harmonized-list-fragility-conflict-and-violence-countries
http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&series=IT.NET.USER.ZS#

COMMENTS

Feel free to comments, suggestions and feedbacks to help us improve our project!:D

Version 1 of proposal

File:Proposal The Defenders Version 1.pdf