Towards a Taxonomy of Challenges in Security Control Implementation

Cybersecurity researchers and practitioners identify and design security controls (e.g., the use of strong passwords), which refer to the countermeasures and safeguards to protect information systems’ confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The effectiveness of controls depends on their implementation. However, controls may have technical and operational issues that challenge effective implementation. Systematizing such challenges would benefit practitioners in enhancing their defense. The goal of this study is to aid security practitioners in defending against cyberattacks by constructing a taxonomy of challenges in security control implementation. We first obtain information regarding the challenges of implementing security control, cataloged in MITRE ATT&CK, using three Large Language Models: ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot. Then, using inductive coding and reflexive thematic analysis, we construct a taxonomy comprising 73 challenges across 8 high-level categories and map the taxonomy with the security controls. We perform a case study on attack techniques in MITRE ATT&CK to identify the challenges associated with security controls for mitigating prevalent attack techniques. We identify that 9 out of 24 prevalent attack techniques do not have any security controls. The rest of the prevalent techniques can be defended. However, the effectiveness of the controls associated with the rest of the prevalent techniques can be limited due to the following: human resources requirements, false positive issues, static detection rules, disruption, and user inconvenience. Our work highlights that security control implementation is subjective, where a diverse set of organizational, technical, human, and external factors can impact its implementation. We recommend organizations not treating security controls as a ticking-off checklist, rather resolve the impeding issues in their implementation.