Security Policy Visualization via SMT Dimensionality Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Complexity and expressiveness of security policies in secured networks make it difficult for administrators to understand how rules interact, leading to potential security breaches due to misunderstandings and hesitation in making policy changes.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a cybersecurity system that uses Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) operations to analyze and visualize security policies, providing a simplified representation on a user interface, allowing administrators to understand existing policies and the impact of changes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If security policies are made more comprehensive and expressive to cover more security scenarios, then security coverage and reliability are improved, but policy complexity increases making it difficult for administrators to understand and manage
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments complex security policies into individual visual rule cards that can be separately examined, understood, and managed. Each rule is displayed as a distinct visual element showing source, destination, action, and protocol information separately, allowing administrators to comprehend individual policy components without being overwhelmed by the overall policy complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms policy analysis from a text-based dimensional space to a visual multi-dimensional space. By using color-coded visual indicators, spatial arrangement, and graphical representations of policy rules, the system adds visual dimensions that make complex policy relationships perceivable and manageable, converting abstract policy complexity into tangible visual information.
2Measurement precision
If administrators manually review and analyze security policy rules to understand interactions, then policy understanding accuracy can be improved, but time consumption and operational efficiency deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary visual organization and arrangement of policy rules before administrator review. The system automatically sorts, colors-codes, and spatially arranges policy cards based on their relationships and characteristics, preparing the policy information in an optimized visual format that reduces the cognitive load and time required for administrators to understand policy interactions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates visual copies and representations of policy rules that simplify the original complex policy data. Each policy rule is transformed into a visual card that copies the essential information in an easily consumable format, allowing administrators to quickly grasp policy meanings without analyzing raw policy text, thereby reducing review time while maintaining understanding accuracy.
3Reliability
If security policies are made more detailed to prevent security breaches, then security reliability is improved, but ease of operation and policy modification become more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a dynamic visual interface where policy cards can be interactively manipulated, reordered, and modified. The visual representation allows administrators to dynamically adjust policy priorities, add or remove rules, and see immediate visual feedback of policy changes, making detailed security policies more operable and modifiable while maintaining their comprehensive security coverage.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a visual interface layer as an intermediary between administrators and detailed security policies. This visual mediation layer translates complex policy details into manageable visual elements, allowing administrators to interact with and modify detailed policies through intuitive visual operations rather than directly editing complex policy text, thereby improving ease of operation while preserving security reliability.
Data Source
AI summary
A system, method, and computer-readable medium are disclosed for implementing a cybersecurity system having security policy visualization. At least one embodiment is directed to a computer-implemented method for implementing security policies in a secured network, including: retrieving a set of rules of a security policy; analyzing the set of rules of the security policy using one or more Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) operations to reduce a dimensionality of the security policy; and generating a visual presentation on a user interface using results of the SMT operations, where the visual presentation includes visual indicia representing one or more targeted policy dimensions with respect to one or more fixed policy dimensions. In at least one embodiment, two or more security policies are presented with visual indicia representing differences between the security policies, including representations of one or more targeted policy dimensions with respect to one or more fixed policy dimensions.