Knowledge Building and Sharing: A Metamodel for Guided Research, Learning, and Application

Specific field methodology and models cannot be an afterthought when designing, developing, or administering any kind of technology or system. However, the mass amount of techniques and options can be both overwhelming and confusing leading to the selection of incorrect or insufficient techniques. For an example in the security field, choosing an inadequate methodology can have harmful repercussions including everything from cyber-attacks to illegal data access and retrieval of private information. The solution is a metamodel that combines the most recent techniques and options categorized by common fields and concerns and presented to allow for a user to weigh the benefits, negatives, and particular circumstances needed to meet the unique needs of the user's system or environment. This metamodel would be of particular use for teaching and the sharing of knowledge. Contrary to some models which only present a high level overview, MOSAIC, is our example section of such a metamodel that will guide the user through the learning of and selection of analysis techniques and new security mechanisms. We provide the background and format for such a metamodel, our process for the selection of the security areas we focused on, and the example proof of concept, MOSAIC, Model of Securing Application Information Confidentiality.