Basis for an integrated security ontology according to a systematic review of existing proposals

The use of ontologies to represent knowledge provides us with organization, communication and reusability. The concepts and relations managed by any scientific community need to be formally defined. Since security in information technologies has evolved as a critical aspect and many related topics have been developed, this paper applies the method of systematic review for identifying, extracting and analyzing the principal proposals for security ontologies. The most mature proposals have been selected and compared by using a formal framework, extracting the key requirements that an integrated and unified security ontology should have, and providing the first steps towards its definition.

Research Highlights► We carry out a systematic review of security ontologies. ► We formally compare the most mature security ontologies. ► We provide the first steps for the definition of an integrated and unified security ontology.