Argumentation-Based Query Answering under Uncertainty with Application to Cybersecurity

Abstract

Decision support tools are key components of intelligent sociotechnical systems, and their successful implementation faces a variety of challenges, including the multiplicity of information sources, heterogeneous format, and constant changes. Handling such challenges requires the ability to analyze and process inconsistent and incomplete information with varying degrees of associated uncertainty. Moreover, some domains require the system’s outputs to be explainable and interpretable; an example of this is cyberthreat analysis (CTA) in cybersecurity domains. In this paper, we first present the P-DAQAP system, an extension of a recently developed query-answering platform based on defeasible logic programming (DeLP) that incorporates a probabilistic model and focuses on delivering these capabilities. After discussing the details of its design and implementation, and describing how it can be applied in a CTA use case, we report on the results of an empirical evaluation designed to explore the effectiveness and efficiency of a possible world sampling-based approximate query answering approach that addresses the intractability of exact computations.

An approach to improve argumentation-based epistemic planning with contextual preferences

“…Thus, computational aspects such as running time efficiency, though of great importance for our long-term goal, fall out of the scope of this paper. A line of work that we are interested in involves the implementation of the framework (and its incorporation into the recently-developed P-DAQAP platform [55]), focusing on achieving scalability and an empirical evaluation in a real scenario, comparing it with other approaches from the literature with respect to effectiveness and efficiency measures. In the formalism, the P-APOP algorithm does not benefit from any heuristic, so another promising issue to analyze in the future is the adaptation of the algorithm to include different heuristic methods that allow the reduction of the search space and, consequently, the overall computational cost.…”

Managing Cybersecurity Threats and Increasing Organizational Resilience

“…By mapping security and privacy threats, the security requirements for each type of threat can be made known and the centralized contact tracing system can be viewed as effective. Acknowledging that decision support tools play a useful role vis à vis intelligent sociotechnical systems [4], a number of challenges can be overcome. The emphasis is on the ability to analyze and process various forms of information.…”