An overview of general theory of security

Cyber security lacks comprehensive theoretical guidance. General security theory, as a set of basic security theory concepts, is intended to guide cyber security and all the other security work. The general theory of security aims to unify the main branches of cyber security and establish a unified basic theory. This paper proposal an overview on the general theory of security, which is devoted to constructing a comprehensive model of network security. The hierarchical structure of the meridian-collateral tree is described. Shannon information theory is employed to build a cyberspace security model. Some central concepts of security, i.e., the attack and defense, are discussed and several general theorems on security are presented.