Cybersecurity Risk Assessments within Critical Infrastructure Social Networks

Abstract

Cybersecurity social networking is a new scientific and engineering discipline that was interdisciplinary in its early days, but is now transdisciplinary. The issues of reviewing and analyzing of principal tasks related to information collection, monitoring of social networks, assessment methods, and preventing and combating cybersecurity threats are, therefore, essential and pending. There is a need to design certain methods, models, and program complexes aimed at estimating risks related to the cyberspace of social networks and the support of their activities. This study considers a risk to be the combination of consequences of a given event (or incident) with a probable occurrence (likelihood of occurrence) involved, while risk assessment is a general issue of identification, estimation, and evaluation of risk. The findings of the study made it possible to elucidate that the technique of cognitive modeling for risk assessment is part of a comprehensive cybersecurity approach included in the requirements of basic IT standards, including IT security risk management. The study presents a comprehensive approach in the field of cybersecurity in social networks that allows for consideration of all the elements that constitute cybersecurity as a complex, interconnected system. The ultimate goal of this approach to cybersecurity is the organization of an uninterrupted scheme of protection against any impacts related to physical, hardware, software, network, and human objects or resources of the critical infrastructure of social networks, as well as the integration of various levels and means of protection.