2014 Symposium Posters

Project Members
Cesare Guariniello, Dr. Daniel DeLaurentis

The analysis of risks associated with communications, and information security for a system-of-systems is a challenging endeavor. This difficulty is due to the interdependencies that exist in the communication and operational dimensions of the system-of-systems network, where disruptions on nodes and links can give rise to cascading failure modes. In this research, we propose the application of a functional dependency analysis tool, as a means of analyzing system-of-system operational and communication architectures. The goal of this research is to quantify the impact of attacks on communications, and information flows on the operability of the component systems, and to evaluate and compare different architectures with respect to their robustness and resilience following an attack. The model accounts for partial capabilities and partial degradation. By comparing architectures based on their sensitivity to attacks, the method can be used to guide decision both in architecting the system-of-systems and in planning updates and modifications, accounting for the criticality of nodes and links on the robustness of the system-of-systems. Synthetic examples show conceptual application of the method