Knowledge Graphs and Semantic Web Tools in Cyber Threat Intelligence: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The amount of data related to cyber threats and cyber attack incidents is rapidly increasing. The extracted information can provide security analysts with useful Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) to enhance their decision-making. However, because the data sources are heterogeneous, there is a lack of common representation of information, rendering the analysis of CTI complicated. With this work, we aim to review ongoing research on the use of semantic web tools such as ontologies and Knowledge Graphs (KGs) within the CTI domain. Ontologies and KGs can effectively represent information in a common and structured schema, enhancing interoperability among the Security Operation Centers (SOCs) and the stakeholders on the field of cybersecurity. When fused with Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) algorithms, the constructed ontologies and KGs can be augmented with new information and advanced inference capabilities, facilitating the discovery of previously unknown CTI. This systematic review highlights the advancements of this field over the past and ongoing decade and provides future research directions.

Keywords

• semantic
• ontologies
• knowledge graph
• cybersecurity
• cyber threat intelligence
• CTI