Computational resiliency

The notion of computational resiliency refers to the ability of a distributed application to tolerate intrusion when under information warfare (IW) attack. This technology seeks an active strengthening of a military mission, rather than protecting its network infrastructure using static defensive measures such as network security, intrusion sensors, and firewalls. Computational resiliency involves the dynamic use of replication, guided by mission policy, to achieve intrusion tolerance so that even undetected attacks do not cause mission failure; however, it goes further to dynamically regenerate replication in response to an IW attack, allowing the level of system assurance to be restored and maintained. Replicated structures are protected through several techniques such as camouflage, dispersion, and layered security policy. This paper describes a prototype concurrent programming technology that we have developed to support computational resiliency and describes how the library has been applied in two prototypical applications.