Ventana software support forum

Hello everyone,

I'm reaching out to this knowledgeable community for insights on leveraging Ventana Systems' tools in enhancing data breach protection. As we all are aware, data security is a paramount concern in our increasingly digital world, and I'm curious to explore how the system dynamics approach can contribute to robust data protection strategies. Specifically, I'm interested in understanding how tools like Vensim or Ventity can be utilized to model and simulate the complex interactions within data networks, identify potential vulnerabilities, and evaluate the impact of various security measures. Can these tools help in forecasting potential breach scenarios or in analyzing the ripple effects of a data leak within an organization? If anyone has experience or case studies related to this, your guidance would be immensely valuable. I'm especially interested in practical applications and any tips on integrating these tools into existing data security frameworks.

Thank you in advance for your help and insights!

I've got no doubt that you can use both Vensim and Ventity to help. What you are describing sounds like a major project, it's not something that any of us could give you a few pointers to get you going.

Using Ventity, one approach would be to define entity types for known vulnerability types (a possible vulnerability framework would be the OSI 7 layer model) with attributes quantifying the various threat vectors, entity types for known threats using the same threat vector attributes as the vulnerability types but quantified to the current threat level, and security measure entity types that represent the measured defenses that have been implemented for the vulnerabilities at a particular installation. Collections could select threats that exceed the attributes of the defenses. More thinking required, but an unknown threats entity type could be based on the known threats with one or more threat attributes increased, but the probability of that unknown threat would have to be mitigated by the best guess effort/cost of a bad actor to create that threat (otherwise every imagined threat scenario could catastrophic). Interesting project.

For starters, google "sander zeijlemaker security system dynamics" - he's done quite a bit of interesting work. You should be able to find much of it in the ISDC conference proceedings.