HORSE Key Achievement: What-If

Category: Significant Technology Development

The What-If is a new concept that has been introduced in the HORSE project, and it is referred to a loop that involves the Impact Analysis Network Digital Twin (IA NDT) in a cybersecurity context for analysing an attack and the potential mitigation actions before being deployed in the real network.

In this case of the project, the Intent-Based Interface (IBI) requests to the Impact Analysis NDT (IA NDT) to analyse a concrete situation on the network where an attack is acting and a concrete mitigation action is proposed, checking some KPIs that are crucial for the mitigation of the attack. The NDT sends back to the IBI the requested KPIs and decides the action in the real infrastructure. The complete workflow is briefly depicted in the next figure.

It is important to highlight the innovation behind this What-If loop. It allows us to test and estimate in advance the impact of mitigation actions and the (re)configuration of network elements. By this loop, the real network will not suffer any inconvenience or disruption, as all modifications can be done previously in the Network Digital Twin and consequently, we can estimate the impact that the action will have on the real environment, and take the proper decision about the deployment of the proposed mitigation action.

References:

[1] J. T. López-Brea et al., “Dynamic Deployment and Security Assessment of Resilient Services over Digital Twins,” 2024 Joint European Conference on Networks and Communications & 6G Summit (EuCNC/6G Summit), Antwerp, Belgium, 2024, pp. 836-841, doi: 10.1109/EuCNC/6GSummit60053.2024.10597070.

[2] HORSE project consortium (2024), D3.1: HORSE Platform Intelligence developed (IT-1), https://horse-6g.eu/deliverables/

[3] HORSE project consortium (2024), D5.2: First HORSE Release: HORSE IT-1 version, at https://horse-6g.eu/deliverables/