Create a "Counter Measure"
Counter Measures are preventive measures that can be applied on "Attack Trees" in order to prevent potential attacks (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 : Example of a Counter-Measure
Attack Tree Designer allows users to attach counter-measures to certain attacks which represent a set of actions realized to prevent the attack from happening or to counter its damage. Figure 2 show an example of the use of the counter measure tool. We note that when adding Counter Measures to attacks, these attacks are colored with distinctive green color in order to show the attacks that have Counter Measures. Moreover, the counter measure property is propagated to parents according to the following rule: counter measure is propagated to a parent connected with "AND Connection" is countered if there is at least one countered child (see Figure 1), and a parent is connected with "OR Connection" is countered if all its children are countered.
Figure 2 : Create a Counter-Measure
The created counter-measure are visible in the property page of the attack tree (see Figure 3) and their content can be modified from the property page or by double clicking the Counter Measure note..
Figure 3 : Property Page of an attack with a counter-measure
As it is the case to almost all Model Elements, you can delete a Counter Measure by selecting the Counter Measure note and pressing the "Delete" button or by right-clicking the element and selecting the Delete Command.
When you add or delete a Counter Measure to an attack, the background color of the attack changes accordingly to signal to the users the attacks that have been taken care of (countered). The default color of the attacks is a Yellow color. A Counter Measure updates the color of the attack to Green. These changes are propagated to the parents of the attacks up to the Root according to the following rule :
- A parent connected with AND connection to its children is considered countered if at least one of its children is countered.
- A parent connected with OR connection to its children is considered countered if all of its children are countered.
Figure 4 : Propagation of Counter Measures to parents