Investigating System Survivability from a Probabilistic Perspective

Yongxin ZHAO  Yanhong HUANG  Qin LI  Huibiao ZHU  Jifeng HE  Jianwen LI  Xi WU  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems   Vol.E97-D    No.9    pp.2356-2370
Publication Date: 2014/09/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1361
DOI: 10.1587/transinf.2013EDP7339
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Fundamentals of Information Systems
Keyword: 
survivability,  probability programs,  probabilistic refinement,  survivability specification,  

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Summary: 
Survivability is an essential requirement of the networked information systems analogous to the dependability. The definition of survivability proposed by Knight in [16] provides a rigorous way to define the concept. However, the Knight's specification does not provide a behavior model of the system as well as a verification framework for determining the survivability of a system satisfying a given specification. This paper proposes a complete formal framework for specifying and verifying the concept of system survivability on the basis of Knight's research. A computable probabilistic model is proposed to specify the functions and services of a networked information system. A quantified survivability specification is proposed to indicate the requirement of the survivability. A probabilistic refinement relation is defined to determine the survivability of the system. The framework is then demonstrated with three case studies: the restaurant system (RES), the Warship Command and Control system (LWC) and the Command-and-Control (C2) system.