NSSA:A Holistic Perspective of Network Security

Traditionally network security deals with maintaining the confidentiality of information, authenticating the user and making the resources available reliably to the intended user, but now apart from these concerns which are at the stake in public networks other important factors are availability and survivability of services which are available on the computer networks. The current generation network security means like intrusion detection system, firewalls, virus detection system etc. present only one of the dimensions of a multidimensional problem of overall network security status. These tools provide detailed information about one aspect of the network security. The task of correlating the events happening in the network and being reported by these tools is left to network administrator. The number of services being made available through these networks is increasing exponentially and so is the number of users of these networks. This paper explores a new concept Network Security Situational Awareness (NSSA). Network Security Situational Awareness is a discipline which focuses on perception, evaluation, projection and resolution of the security risk to computer networks. In this paper the term situational Awareness is explained in context of computer network security. So the ischolar_main of the term NSSA is explored. Various techniques employed to achieve NSSA have been explored in this survey paper. The conceptual model for NSSA and its functional requirements are also discussed.