Using Publicly Available Information to Predict Cyber Failures

This research examines the use of an anticipatory method and publicly available newsworthy information on ten past cyber failures of critical infrastructures in the United States to predict cyber failures of networks and systems of technology startups. The Anticipatory Failure Determination (AFD) method was modified to enable the use of publicly available information. A list of the resources that were used to cause the ten cyber failures in critical infrastructures was produced and used to make predictions of failure scenarios of a stack of open source software. Finally, the factors that enable and constrain the use of the AFD method to predict cyber failures in technology startups were specified. Junior engineers, designers, contractors and other stakeholders of cyber systems as well as government policy makers will be interested in outcome of this research to predict potential cyber failures for proactive mitigation.