An Operational Responsibility and Task Monitoring Method: A Data Breach Case Study

Abstract

As a result of digitalization, services become highly dependent on information systems thus increasing the criticality of security management. However, with system complexity and the involvement of more human resources, it becomes more arduous to monitor and track tasks and responsibilities. This creates a lack of visibility hindering decision making. To support operational monitoring, we propose a method composed of i) a core of security concepts from International Standard Organization (ISO) standards ii) a graphical modeling language iii) a guiding process and iv) a tool that provides verification through formal Object Constraint Language (OCL) queries. Applying this method to the case of the Capital One data breach showcases incident prevention through task supervision. The resulting work product is a formal comprehensive map of assets, actors, tasks and responsibilities. The SysML formalism allows different actors to extract information from the map using OCL queries. This allows for regular task and responsibility verification thus closing any window of attack possible.