Adversary Path Diagrams or ASDs

A little something from the Department of Energy.

Sandia National Laboratories, of Albuquerque NM was assigned by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) as the lead laboratory for physical security research and development during the mid-1970’s. This initiative was intended to aid in the protection of nuclear weapons from theft or sabotage. As a part of this responsibility, Sandia developed Cost and Performance Analysis (CPA). CPA provides actionable information on the cost and effectiveness of DOE security systems.

This strategy was an integration of two existing PC-based software tools:

· ACEIT (Automated Cost Estimating Integrated Tools) developed by Tecolote Research Inc. for the U.S. Air Force. ACEIT is widely used throughout the Department of Defense (DOD). ACEIT supports costs analysis over the full life-cycle of a system;

· ASSESS (Analytic System and Software for Evaluating Safeguards and Security) developed jointly by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and Sandia National Laboratories for the DOE. ASSESS supports performance analysis.

CPA organizes the cost and performance data generated by ACEIT and ASSESS into Excel spreadsheets. These spreadsheets make the data more accessible to analysts and organizes the results for management.

ASSESS models the protective domain visually, and maps out Adversary Sequence Diagrams. The Adversary Sequence Diagram (ASD) is a graphical representation of physical protection system elements along paths that adversaries can follow to accomplish their objective. For a specific physical protection system and threat, the most vulnerable path can be determined.

This path with the least physical protection system effectiveness establishes the effectiveness of the total physical protection system. An ASD is developed for a single critical asset associated with an undesired event.