Software Component Survivability in Information Warfare

The need for software component survivability is pressing for mission-critical systems in information warfare. In this chapter, we describe how mission-critical distributed systems can survive component failures or compromises with malicious codes in information warfare. We define our definition of survivability, discuss the survivability challenges in a large mission-critical system in information warfare, and identify static, dynamic, and hybrid survivability models. Furthermore, we discuss the trade offs of each model. Technical details and implementation of the models are not described in this chapter because of space limitations. IntroductIon As information systems became ever more complex and the interdependence of these systems increased, the survivability picture became more and more complicated. The need for survivability is most pressing for mission-critical systems in information warfare. When components are exported from a remote system to a local system under different administration and deployed in different environments, we cannot guarantee the proper execution of those remote components in the current run-time environment. Therefore, in the run time, we should consider component failures (in particular, remote components) that may occur due to poor implementation, during integration with other components in the system,