Company Security Assesment with Agent Based Simulation

A network security simulation system is useful as a network security application in network security training exercises. Also, the simulation system enables the system administrator to observe how changing different parameters and security restrictions can affect the security of a network. This paper presents a simulation system for security risk assessment for companies. An agent-based modeling paradigm is used for the implementation of the proposed simulation system. An agent-based system can estimate network security risks and provide a guide for effective policies in order to protect the network from attacks. The proposed system allows security professionals to simulate varying network environments, attacker and defender scenarios in accordance with different situations. Therefore, the proposed agent-based system captures companies' network system dynamics that consist of interactions of multiple agents, including attackers and defenders that the system can use. The proposed model is evaluated through a case study in order to assess security risks for various security policies in a representative company's network. © 2020 IEEE.