Math for Security

3 Securing Networks with Graph Theory

Graph theory is a powerful but often overlooked tool in a security analyst’s arsenal. A graph is a mathematical structure that shows relationships (called edges or connections) between things (called nodes or vertices), and graph theory provides a suite of algorithms for analyzing the structure and importance of these different, often interlinked, relationships. As technical a topic as security is, at its core it’s about relationships: between computers and networks, users and systems, pieces of information, and so on. By modeling a computer network or social network as a graph, you can examine the composition ...