SECURITY SYSTEM FOR AND METHOD OF DETECTING AND RESPONDING TO CYBER ATTACKS ON LARGE NETWORK SYSTEMS

An improved security system for and method of detecting and responding to cyber attacks on a network or network element. The system comprises: (a) an intelligent agent-based information retrieval subsystem configured so as to automatically search for and retrieve relevant data from distributed sources; (b) a rule-based inferencing mechanism configured so as to interpret retrieved data within the situational context to support event and alert generation for cyber threat assessment and prediction; and (c) a threat assessment and prediction mechanism configured so as to capture relating to the interrelationship between cyber sensor outputs and cyber attacks.