Information Assurance

5.2. Survivability and the Impact of Fault Models

Before analyzing the survivability of a system, one has to understand the notion of faults. There are many kinds of faults and the literature in fault-tolerant system design has addressed this diversity in the context of fault models. However, the causes of the faults considered in the dependability community have been attributed mainly to failing components, for example, material fatigue, breakdown of physical or electronic components, accidents, or environmental influences. The impact of malicious behavior as the result of hacking, whether it be from external sources or even insiders; viruses or Trojan horses; denial of service; and so on have traditionally not been addressed. It was only later ...