Link types

Card key

docs_qp3vhh4t

Status

Ready

Card type

base/cardTypes/page

Labels

Owner

N/A

Information classification

public

Introduction

A link is a relationship between cards. Each link is of a specific link type, which defines a name such as causes, an outbound display name (Causes), an inbound display name (Caused by) and the allowed card types for the source and destination of a link.

Links may be used, for example, to represent that an asset presents a risk, a control mitigates a risk, a control implements a compliance requirement, a threat is related to another threat, or that a test verifies a requirement.

Managing link types using the Cyberismo command line tool

To see a list of the available link types, use the following command:

$ cyberismo show linkTypes

The names of link types are of the format module/linkTypes/linkType, for example base/linkTypes/causes.

To see the help for how to create a link type, use the following command:

$ cyberismo create linkType --help

To create a new link type, for example myLinkType, use the following command:

$ cyberismo create linkType myLinkType

Cyberismo will create a new file called myLinkType.json in .cards/local/linkTypes/myLinkType.json. If the card prefix of your Cyberismo project is example, then the full name of the new link type will be example/linkTypes/myLinkType.

When choosing a name for your link type, see Naming conventions.

To finalise the link type definition, you need to edit the myLinkType.json file with a text editor.

Link type file format

Link types are defined in JSON files that follow the link type schema, as described in the table below.

Table 1. The properties of a link type
Properties	Type	Description	Required
name	`string`	The name of the link type	✓ Yes
outboundDisplayName	`string`	A name by which the link is referred to in the user interface (from-to).	✓ Yes
inboundDisplayName	`string`	A name by which the link is referred to in the user interface (to-from).	✓ Yes
sourceCardTypes	`string` `[]`	The names of the card types that can be the source of this link type. If empty, all card types are allowed.	✓ Yes
destinationCardTypes	`string` `[]`	The names of the card types that can be the target of this link type. If empty, all card types are allowed.	✓ Yes
enableLinkDescription	`boolean`	If true, the user can add a description to the link.	✓ Yes