Optimal Countermeasures Selection Against Cyber Attacks: A Comprehensive Survey on Reaction Frameworks

It is without doubt that today the volume and sophistication of cyber attacks keeps consistently growing, militating an endless arm race between attackers and defenders. In this context, full-fledged frameworks, methodologies, or strategies that are able to offer optimal or near-optimal reaction in terms of countermeasure selection, preferably in a fully or semiautomated way, are of high demand. This is reflected in the literature, which encompasses a significant number of major works on this topic spanning over a time period of 5 years, that is, from 2012 to 2016. The survey at hand has a dual aim, namely, first, to critically analyze all the pertinent works in this field, and second to offer an in-depth discussion and side-by-side comparison among them based on seven common criteria. Also, a quite extensive discussion is offered to highlight on the shortcomings and future research challenges and directions in this timely area.