Entity Relationship Diagram Approach to Defining Cyber-attacks

Cyber-attack studies are at the core of cybersecurity studies. Cyber-attacks threaten our ability to use the Internet safely, productively, and creatively worldwide and are the source of many security concerns. However, the "cyber-attack” concept is underdeveloped in the academic literature and what is meant by cyber-attack is not clear. To advance theory, design and operate databases to support scholarly research, perform empirical observations, and compare different types of cyber-attacks, it is necessary to first clarify the “concept of cyber-attack”. In this thesis, the following research question is addressed: How to represent a cyber-attack? Entity Relationship Diagrams are used to examine definitions of cyber-attacks available in the literature and information on ten successful high-profile attacks that is available on the Internet. This exploratory research contributes a representation and a definition of the concept of cyber-attack.