2026/04/19 by Sheldon Paul, Izzat Alsmadi · 1 voice
Computer Science · #Data integrity #File system #Information and Cyber Security #News aggregator #Normalization (sociology) #Process (computing) #Security and Verification in Computing #Server #Vulnerability assessment #Web Application Security Vulnerabilities #Web server #cs.CR #cs.LG
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2604.17256
openalex publication_date 2026/04/19 · arxiv published 2026/04/19 · arxiv updated 2026/04/19 · openalex created_date 2026/04/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Assessing the security posture of modern computing systems typically requires the use of multiple specialized tools. These tools focus on different aspects such as configuration compliance, file integrity, and vulnerability exposure, and their outputs are often difficult to interpret collectively. This paper introduces the Unified Compliance Aggregator (UCA), a framework that integrates several open-source security tools into a single composite score representing overall system security. The proposed framework combines outputs from Lynis, OpenSCAP (STIG and CIS profiles), AIDE, Tripwire, and Nmap NSE. A normalization process converts heterogeneous outputs into a consistent 0 to 100 scale, followed by weighted aggregation. We also introduce a logarithmic scoring model for file integrity measurements to address limitations observed in prior linear approaches. Experiments were conducted on Ubuntu 22.04 across different hardening levels and environments. Results show consistent improvement in composite scores as systems are hardened, while also revealing contrasting behavior between compliance and file integrity tools. Two case studies, a basic web server and a DVWA-based system illustrate how the framework can be applied in practical scenarios.