Survivability of Operating Systems: Handling Vulnerabilities

Dependability and security are flip sides of the same coin – linked conceptually though differing in process! Both arise from the occurrence of design or operational “deficiencies” in a system though differ in the processes of invocation of these deficiencies. Security issues often pertain to the intentional abuse of these deficiencies (vulnerabilities) to perturb the system operations; dependability, on the other hand, leans more towards handling of the unexpected and unintentional exercising of such deficiencies (faults & errors) – the consequence of vulnerabilities from either the security or dependability viewpoint being that the delivery of expected services gets (potentially) disrupted. In this sense, the term “vulnerability” is equally applicable from both the dependability and security perspectives; we will use this term interchangeably representing fault/errors in the dependability context, and also its more common security usage. For the scope of this write-up, our “survivability” viewpoint focuses on enhancing the robustness of systems to provide for sustained delivery of proper services, be they dependability or security nuanced.