Are We Compromised? Modelling Security Assessment Games

Security assessments are an integral part of organisations’ strategies for protecting their digital assets and critical IT infrastructure. In this paper we propose a game-theoretic modelling of a particular form of security assessment – one which addresses the question “are we compromised?”. We do so by extending the recently proposed game “FlipIt”, which itself can be used to model the interaction between defenders and attackers under the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) scenario. Our extension gives players the option to “test” the state of the game before making a move. This allows one to study the scenario in which organisations have the option to perform periodic security assessments of such nature, and the benefits they may bring.