Quality of Information Assurance - Assessment, Management and Use (QIAAMU)
Partha Pratim Pal, Hala Mostafa, Nathaniel B. Soule, Michael Atighetchi, Nicholas Hoff, Emily Hahn, Amy Fedyk, Paul Rubel, Kathryn McGuire, Mathew TanCreti, Robin Berthier, William H. Sanders, Nathan Dautenhahn · 2013
Abstract : This project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of run-time mission-oriented assessment of assurance and tradeoff in a distributed system. Distributed mission support systems today incorporate various QoS and security mechanisms, but there is no clear way to judge whether the system is delivering QoS and security assurance at the level needed for mission success. Security is treated as an all or nothing quality--which leads to missed opportunities as well as undue risk taking. Measuring security is difficult. QIAAMU took an approach similar to QoS management where assurance is measured against requirements specified by mission stakeholders. This approach enables us to treat QoS and security in a uniform way as well as consider QoS-Security tradeoffs when the system fails to deliver QoS and Security at the required level. Starting with the metrics to observe and measure, this project developed a foundation for run time assessment and tradeoff including an assessment scheme, an innovative distributed tradeoff algorithm and usability support, and instantiated the assessment and tradeoff framework within a security architecture, which underwent a final demonstration and evaluation phase in December 2012. This report is the final technical report for the QIAAMU project and describes the research, development, and evaluation results from the project.