Abstract

Modern cyber defense environments operate across multiple domains, including networks, endpoints, cloud infrastructure, and cyber-physical systems. Threats increasingly exploit coordination across these domains, overwhelming defense mechanisms that rely on isolated detection and response strategies. This paper presents a Cognitive Threat Orchestration Framework designed to support adaptive, coordinated cyber defense across heterogeneous domains. The framework integrates perception, reasoning, and action layers to enable situational awareness, threat prioritization, and response orchestration in dynamic environments. By modeling threats as evolving entities rather than isolated alerts, the framework supports context-aware decision-making and coordinated mitigation strategies. Evaluation is conducted using assumed multi-domain attack scenarios and simulated defense responses. Results demonstrate improved threat response accuracy, reduced mitigation latency, and enhanced robustness compared to flat security orchestration approaches. Analytical and graphical results show that cognitive orchestration enables defense systems to adapt to complex threat evolution while maintaining interpretability and scalability. The study highlights the importance of cognition-driven coordination in next-generation cyber defense systems and provides a practical foundation for building resilient, autonomous security operations in multi-domain environments.