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AICA Development Challenges

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Autonomous Intelligent Cyber Defense Agent (AICA)

Part of the book series: Advances in Information Security ((ADIS,volume 87))

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Abstract

In this chapter we explore the development challenges that must be tackled before fulfilling the great potential of Autonomous Intelligent Cyberdefense Agent (AICA). We propose dividing development challenges into two kinds: the ones that are associated with the AICA engineering ecosystem and the ones that are associated with the AICA research ecosystem. This is reasonable because adequately addressing engineering challenges requires to tackling a range of research challenges. Moreover, engineering and research have different ways of thinking; in general, engineering focuses on narrower aspects and is often built on technical breakthroughs resulting from fundamental research. The engineering ecosystem has six components: design; implementation; individual test & certification; composition; composite test & certification; and deployment. The research ecosystem also accommodating six components: models; architectures; mechanisms; testing and certification; operations; and social, ethical, and legal aspects. To show how the challenges associated with these components are related to each other, we make connections between these two ecosystems by describing how tackling challenges in the research ecosystem would contribute to tackling the challenges that are encountered when engineering AICAs. We draw insights into the gaps between the state-of-the-art technology and the desired ultimate goals and propose research directions to bridge them. We hope this chapter will serve as a milestone in guiding the development (i.e., engineering and research) activities in fulfilling the vision of AICAs.

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Acknowledgement

We thank Dr. Alexander Kott for his constructive feedbacks that guided us in revising the content. The work was supported in part by ARO Grant #W911NF-17-1-0566, NSF Grants #2122631 and #2115134, and Colorado State Bill 18-086.

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  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO, USA

    Shouhuai Xu

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Correspondence to Shouhuai Xu .

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  1. United States Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, MD, USA

    Alexander Kott

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Xu, S. (2023). AICA Development Challenges. In: Kott, A. (eds) Autonomous Intelligent Cyber Defense Agent (AICA). Advances in Information Security, vol 87. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29269-9_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29269-9_18

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