Cy-Through: Toward a Cybersecurity Simulation for Supporting Live, Virtual, and Constructive Interoperability

Abstract

Cybersecurity simulation is a useful, practical approach to provide insights to counter cyber threats for organizations with a large-scale, complex cyber environment. From the micro behavior of malware on a host to the macroscopic impact of a DDoS attack, various phenomena can be observed and analyzed with simulation scenarios. Many platforms for cybersecurity simulation have been developed to support simulation scenarios and models with different fidelity levels: live, virtual, and constructive. Many platforms for cybersecurity simulation have been developed to support simulation scenarios and models with varying fidelity levels: live, virtual, and constructive. Hence, the support of interoperability between models with different fidelities remained untrodden in the cybersecurity simulation literature. In this paper, we propose a novel cybersecurity simulation platform, Cy-Through, which enables full interoperability between models with different fidelity levels, live/virtual and constructive models. Through the development and demonstration of a prototype of the platform, we prove the possibility of a Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC)-interoperable cybersecurity simulation.

Keywords

• Cybersecurity simulation
• simulation platform
• virtualization platform
• LVC interoperability
• prototype demonstration