Unit 6
Executive summary and app presentation
Executive summary and app presentation — Reflection
This assignment required developing an application to visualise an attack tree and supplement it with functionality to interactively add values to individual nodes.
The application is developed in Python, but for this case there wasn’t any specific requirement for how the user interface should be implemented. Therefore I decided to develop a full-stack application using Flask that processes data on the backend and serves a frontend to be displayed in a browser.
This decision allowed to simplify the input processing, as it was possible to implement a few forms in HTML and process the values on the backend, instead of developing a more complicated CLI to process diverse user input. Similarly, it allows to enter the values directly in the rendered nodes, which makes the process a lot more user-intuitive.
It was enjoyable to develop this application: it encompassed using a diverse technical stack, as well as delve more deeply into how attack trees are developed and how they work. There were however some difficulties that I experienced with the papers on quantitative analysis of attack trees: their extensive use of mathematical language initially threw me off initially.
In any case, I found the assignment stimulating where it encouraged me to consider other possible forms of reports for a business. Perhaps, even the most complex formats and frameworks can be easier to perceive when presented in a more interactive form.