# An Evaluation of the Security of Bare Machine Computing (BMC) Systems against Cybersecurity Attacks
## 7 Conclusions  
We evaluated the BMC paradigm for its resilience against 22 popular cyberattacks. We collected data for these attacks and identified their root causes and preventive methods. As most of these attacks target conventional systems with some form of an OS, we identified conventional system guidelines and characteristics and compared them with BMC system guidelines and characteristics. In addition, we provided some background on BMC applications and examined code snippets to give more insight into the BMC paradigm.  
We found that in conventional system guidelines, 15 out of 20 have possible exposure to cybersecurity vulnerabilities, whereas in BMC systems, 17 out of 20 have possibleresilience to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Similarly, in conventional system characteristics, 17 out of 28 have possible exposure to cybersecurity vulnerabilities, whereas in BMC systems, 26 out of 28 have possible resilience to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Overall, BMC systems show possible resiliency, and conventional systems indicate possible exposure to cybersecurity vulnerabilities.  
The following observations are made on root causes versus cyberattacks. Root cause contributions for OS vulnerabilities are 40%, fake websites are 31%, downloads are 45%, and infected USBs are 31%. This clearly indicates the dominance of operating systems in cyberattacks. Similarly, the following observations are made on preventive mechanisms versus cyberattacks. The preventive mechanism contribution for consistent training and reviews is 100%. The preventive mechanism contributions for antivirus software, two-factor authentication, firewalls, and regularly backing up digital records are 27% for each. The preventive mechanism contribution for \"keeping OS up to date\" is 18%. The preventive mechanism contributions for \"scanning system and USB\" are 13.6%. Other preventive mechanisms have contributions less than 9%. Notice that none of these preventive mechanisms guarantee 100% protection from any cyberattack.  
We also noted that for the BMC systems, the applicability of the root causes is 15%, and the applicability of preventive mechanisms is 63%.  
We conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the BMC paradigm using the selected attacks and their root causes, which showed that 20 out of 22 attacks are preventable by using this paradigm. The other two attacks, namely data breaches and insider threats, are not preventable as they are caused by insiders who misuse their trust. We described significant contributions of this research, which justify use of the BMC paradigm for building real-world applications with intrinsic security. Future studies should further investigate the inherent security strengths of the BMC paradigm and the resilience of BMC applications against possible cyberattacks.  
Conceptualization, F.A., R.K.K., A.L.W., N.S. and A.R.; methodology, F.A., R.K.K., A.L.W., N.S. and A.R.; validation, F.A., R.K.K., A.L.W. and N.S.; investigation, F.A., R.K.K., A.L.W., N.S. and A.R.; resources, F.A., R.K.K., A.L.W., N.S. and A.R.; writing--original draft, R.K.K., writing--review and editing, F.A., R.K.K., A.L.W. and N.S.; supervision, R.K.K. and A.L.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This research received no external funding. Data availability Statement: Data are contained within the article. The authors acknowledge that the Grammarly AI tool was used to check and correct English grammar and mistakes. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.