Method for systematically and objectively assessing system security risk

A system to apply system integrity assurance comprising:

• circuitry to include:
• a trust analysis module to capture and store information, from a design specification for an information system having a functional and structural component, an information assurance component and an anti-tamper component, as to which components of the information system the information system trusts to enforce a security policy and to provide a respective trust score;
• a trustworthiness assessment module to capture and store for each system element in the information system a trustworthiness assessment and to provide a respective trustworthiness score such that trust gap mitigation can be performed for selected system elements as determined by the respective trust score and trustworthiness score;
• a vulnerability assessment module to capture and store information as to any identified residual vulnerabilities determined from a vulnerability assessment such that residual vulnerabilities can be mitigated by designing preventive and reactive countermeasures to reduce the number of residual vulnerabilities and by designing and applying anti-tamper techniques to critical data requiring protection to ensure countermeasure effectiveness;
• a countermeasure effectiveness assessment module to assess the countermeasures applied to the information system;
• and
• a security risk assessment module to capture and store information to assess the security risk associated with any remaining residual vulnerabilities to determine if such residual vulnerabilities are acceptable to protect critical data and technology in the information system and to provide a list of needed changes to the system requirements to balance the vulnerabilities of the information system.