Edward Hanna

Autonomic agents for survivable security systems

Autonomic Systems are essentially about creating self-managing systems based on the biological metaphor of the non-conscious acting autonomic nervous system. The Autonomic initiative has been motivated by ever increasing complexity and total cost of ownership of today’s system of systems. Autonomicity also offers inroads in terms of fault-tolerant computing and assisting in creating survivable systems. This paper examines the relevant technologies including Agents for engineering autonomicity and survivability in a secure location biometric system.

Addressing the Corrections Crisis with Software Technology

More than 2.3 million people currently live in US prisons or jails, 25 percent of the worlds total inmate population, a comparatively much higher rate than in other Western countries. Denmark only incarcerates 66 of every 100,000 citizens, compared to 760 in the US (www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/worldbrief/world_brief.html). This situation results from tough sentencing policies that focus on drug use and habitual offenders. Over three decades, these policies contributed to high incarceration rates. While most states have stopped enforcing these policies, the legacy remains, with high recidivism rates perpetuating the cycle. This situation has resulted in rampant overcrowding, with facilities operating at levels above design capacity and inmates frequently housed on bunks in recreational areas. Faced with rising costs and rampant overcrowding, correctional facilities are turning to software technologies for help.

Survivable security systems through autonomicity

Technological developments such as biometrics are providing new potential for next generation security systems. At the same time these developments can make the system more complex to manage. Some classes of systems have a fundamental requirement to survive be that to ensure an organization does not loose tens of millions of dollars due to downtime or to ensure there is not a security breach. Autonomic self-managing systems are motivated to hide the ever increasing complexity in todays systems but through their selfware approach they also offer the potential to create survivable systems. This paper details one such approach, to create a survivable security system for correction centers.

Reflex Autonomicity in an Agent-Based Security System :: The Autonomic Access Control System

The application of the biological metaphor of the autonomic nervous system to computing has created the paradigm of autonomic computing, in which computer systems self-regulate by using automatic reactions to defend, optimize and heal. Agent technologies have been highlighted in the literature as particularly appropriate for the development of autonomic systems. This paper reports on an investigation of the use of the autonomic concepts of reflex autonomicity and apoptosis in the development of a multi-agent system. Findings are discussed with reference to the use of the JADE agent platform for development

Targeting Prediction: Engineering a Distributed Event Processor for an Autonomic Biometric System

This paper reports on the latest developments in a deployed survivable secure system in relation to enabling the longer term aim of moving from a reactive to a predictive system. At this stage it has been decided to redevelop the event/rule processor into a distributed system to facilitate the future requirements of a predictive system

Engineering Vertical Orchestration: From Biometric Trace Events to Incident Reporting

This paper reports on the latest developments in a deployed survivable secure system. The latest version of the system aims to transcribe low-level biometric events into high-level incident reports. This not only provides reactive reporting by providing evidence of who, where, and what when an incident occurs; and pro-active activity by ensuring high-level policies are being followed through low-level system interaction; but also provides another building block towards the long term vision of achieving a predictive system, where through the biometric event trail a developing negative incident can be identified and prevented

The Imminent Complexity Quagmire in Pervasive Computing--Autonomic Agents a Solution?

This paper highlights the need for intrinsic self- management for next generation computing to combat the inherent complexity involved in the sheer scale of pervasive devices and connectivity. Through emerging lessons from a deployed Biometric Identification and Tracking System the recommendation from current available technologies is to utilize autonomic agents to provide the future requirements for self-management.