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Introduction
The present
global information infrastructure of interconnected
computers and complex networked application systems is
already suffering what can be termed a 'dependability gap'
between (legitimate) expectations and reality. Moreover, the
majority of large computer system development projects
overrun budgets and timescales and many fail to deliver the
required functionality and dependability.
However,
the plans that the EU Member States have for an "e-Europe"
involve the widespread use by 2010 of computer systems for
many highly demanding and complex new tasks and constitute
yet greater dependability challenges. Indeed, an ISTAG
Report predicts a huge expansion in Europe's dynamically
evolving information infrastructure, involved in
ever-growing numbers of often unintended interdependencies
with other major infrastructures, and suffering many
challenging problems arising from system mobility, ubiquity,
invisibility and heterogeneity, from very large numbers of
untrained users, etc. Thus concern regarding the impact of
the closely-related topics of computer system dependability
and infrastructure interdependencies on the plans for a
future Information Society figures large in the various EU
IST planning documents, with the latest draft IST 2003-2004
Workprogramme listing "Towards a Global Dependability and
Security Framework" as one of the Strategic Objectives for
its First Call.
Fortunately,
European industry and academia have many of the technical
skills needed for the building of a future dependable
Information Society, such as in quality management (e.g. ISO
9000-3), system level formal methods and tools,
cryptography, fault detection techniques (e.g. static
analysis), fault-tolerant architectures, Bayesian
statistical approaches to fault assessment, etc. The demand
for dependable computing comes at a time when the PC's role
as the dominant hardware platform is itself under threat
from increasingly powerful smartcards and other embedded
system architectures, as the world moves along a path
towards ambient (or pervasive) intelligent systems. These
changes will create an opportunity for European industry to
win a greater share of the software and systems markets,
with consequent benefits to employment and wealth creation
in the EU. Thus the IST programme in FP6 provides a unique
opportunity for an initiative on system and infrastructure
dependability that could have a real impact on EU prosperity
and quality of life.
The subject
of system dependability needs to be treated holistically in
such a initiative, in order to contribute significantly to
the tasks of:
- providing all potentially relevant dependability
attributes (e.g. availability, security, safety,
reliability, survivability, etc), since a balance of
several such attributes is invariably needed,
- allowing for the fact that system dependability is a
"weakest link" problem, and hence for all types of faults
(e.g. intermittent hardware faults, software
specification and design faults, human-machine
interaction faults including intrusions, malicious acts
by corrupt insiders, and undesirable
interdependencies),
- making appropriate use of all major (technical and
socio-technical) means for achieving dependability:
rigorous design; fault tolerance; verification and
validation; system evaluation, [1]
- coping with dependability threats (failure, fault and
error) "chains" from one system to another, caused by
system interaction, composition and creation, and
- overcoming various linguistic and cultural divides
(e.g. dependability/ security/ survivability/
trustworthiness) among the various research communities,
though without necessarily imposing a common culture and
terminology.
The
consortium that is undertaking IST's Accompanying Measure on
System Dependability (AMSD), has amongst its tasks the
development of an overall dependability road-map, and
constituency & consensus building activities aimed at
reaching broad agreement on means for achieving such a
co-ordinated programme in FP6 of activities centred on
dependability. Such a programme should encompass a full
range of dependability-related activities, e.g. RTD on the
various aspects of dependability, together with education
and training provisions, means for encouraging and enabling
projects elsewhere in FP6 and in industry generally to use
dependability best practice, and support for effective
dialogues between relevant policy makers and the
dependability research communities.
[1]
These are in essence the complete set of 'dependability
means' (fault prevention, tolerance, removal and
forecasting) that are identified in IFIP WG10.4 analyses -
see, for example: J.C. Laprie, (Ed.). Dependability:
Basic Concepts and Associated Terminology, Dependable
Computing and Fault-Tolerant Systems. Springer-Verlag,
1991.
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