CyBOK — The Cybersecurity Body of Knowledge

From secure coding practices to managing third-party components and responding to vulnerabilities in production, building secure software requires more than just finding bugs. It demands a comprehensive approach that spans the entire software lifecycle. This episode explores the Secure Software Lifecycle, or SSDL, the processes and practices that help organizations develop, deploy, and maintain software that upholds the core principles of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. We speak with CyBOK Secure Software Lifecycle Topic Guide author Laurie Williams for insighits into the topic.

In this topic guide we set out the present state of thinking on how to combine the perpectives of cyber security and safety and reliability cultures. In particular, we focus on a structured approach to defending safety critical systems, with mechanisms already in place for safety and reliability. In other words, we do not start with the assumption of greenfield sites and recognise that security cultures must work in concert with existing, well-embedded, safety and reliability cultures. We speak with CyBOK Security Informed Safety Topic Guide author Victor Lough for a view into the topic.

Adoption of cloud computing has accelerated the digital transformation of organisations globally, supported by a corresponding transformation in cybersecurity. With the migration of applications from on-premise data centres to the public cloud and their integration with edge environments, the threats to processing sensitive data have changed. The cloud platform's built-in security has mitigated the broader threat landscape for businesses, but it has also brought additional complexity and skill demands. As a result, organisations must manage multiple cloud providers with many new cybersecurity solutions that are hosted on different technology platforms.We speak with CyBOK Cloud Security Topic Guide author Mark Buckwell for a view into the topic.

Cybersecurity, like other industries, has seen an explosion in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies in recent years. AI and ML can help to automate tasks. Data-driven approaches in general can draw patterns from vast volumes of data far quicker than humans are can. This episode summarises the state of AI for security at the time of writing and highlights some of the considerations to guide whether it is an appropriate approach for a given problem, common pitfalls to avoid, and human-AI ecosystems.AI is challenged by several open research areas including lack of transparency, robustness to concept drift, and the security of AI systems themselves. This topic guide is for those looking to build and/or procure AI solutions to use for cybersecurity applications. Some sections are more relevant for those building and others to those procuring solutions. We speak with CyBOK AI for Security author Matilda Rhode for an overview of the topic.

The Security Economics Knowledge Guide introduces some of the most impactful ways economics has helped to shed light on cybersecurity problems and frame solutions that blend private and public action. The guide focuses on the organizational, rather than individual, perspective, which is where the majority of scholarly activity has focused. The author of this knowledge guides shares canonical security failures from an economic perspective, describes key measurement challenges, reviews firm-level approaches to improving cybersecurity, and discusses available public-policy options. We speak with CyBOK Security Economics author Tyler Moore for an overview of the topic.

Machine Learning (ML) has rapidly become a fundamental technology that underpins count- less applications, from natural language processing and computer vision to fraud detection and personalized recommendations. In recent years, there has been a growing understanding of how to use ML in security contexts, leading to the development of advanced tools and techniques for detecting and preventing malicious activities. However, the security and privacy aspects of ML itself remain less understood, posing new challenges and opportunities for researchers and practitioners. This Cybersecurity Body of Knowledge (CyBoK) Knowledge Guide (KG) aims to define the scope of adversarial machine learning and privacy in ML and provide an overview of the state- of-the-art in these rapidly evolving fields. Our focus is on the key challenges, open problems, and promising solutions that have emerged in the context of securing and preserving the privacy of ML systems. We speak with CyBOK Security and Privacy of AI authors Lorenzo Cavallaro and Emiliano De Cristofaro for an overview of the topic.

The ubiquity of networking allows us to connect all sorts of devices and gain unprecedented access to a whole range of applications and services anytime, anywhere. However, our heavy reliance on networking technology also makes it an attractive target for malicious users who are willing to compromise the security of our communications and/or cause disruption to services that are critical for our day-to-day survival in a connected world. The Network Security 2.0 knowledge area explains the challenges associated with securing a network under a variety of attacks for a number of networking technologies and widely used security protocols, along with emerging security challenges and solutions. We speak with CyBOK Network Security 2.0 author Christian Rossow for an overview of the topic.

The Formal Methods knowledge area surveys the most relevant topics in formal methods for security. As a discipline, formal methods address foundations, methods and tools, based on mathematics and logic, for rigourously developing and reasoning about computer systems, whether they be software, hardware, or a combination of the two. The application of formal methods to security has emerged over recent decades as a well-established research area focused on the specification and proof of security properties of systems, their components, and protocols. We speak with CyBOK Formal Methods author David Basin for an overview of the topic.

The Applied Cryptography knowledge area This document provides a broad introduction to the field of cryptography, focusing on applied aspects of the subject. It complements the CyBoK document [1] which focuses on formal aspects of cryptography (including definitions and proofs) and on describing the core cryptographic primitives. That said, formal aspects are highly relevant when considering applied cryptography. As we shall see, they are increasingly important when it comes to providing security assurance for real-world deployments of cryptography. We speak with CyBOK Applied Cryptography author Kenny Paterson for an overview of the topic.

The purpose of the Web and Mobile Security chapter is to provide an overview of security mechanisms, attacks and defences in modern web and mobile ecosystems. Web and mobile security have become the primary means through which many users interact with the Internet and computing systems. Hence, their impact on overall information security is significant due to the sheer prevalence of web and mobile applications (apps). Covering both web and mobile security, this Knowledge Area emphasises the intersection of their security mechanisms, vulnerabilities and mitigations.  We speak with CyBOK Web and Mobile Security author Sascha Fahl for an introductory overview of the topic.