Security Measuring for Self-adaptive Security

Self-adaptive security is needed due to vast amount of changes in an execution environment and threat landscape, which all cannot be anticipated at software design-time. Self-adaptive security requires means for monitoring a security level and decision making capability to improve the current security level. In this paper, we describe how security metrics are able to support self-adaptive security. The paper analyses benefits and challenges of security measuring from the self-adaptive security perspective. Thus, five benefits and three challenges of security metrics in self-adaptive security are described. Furthermore, the paper derives requirements that measuring causes for self-adaptive security. Based on the derived requirements, extension components for the MAPE (Monitor, Analyse, Plan and Execute) reference model are proposed.