Quantification and Evaluation of Survivability on Information Systems

We propose a general survivability quantification framework which is applicable to a wide range of information system architectures and applications. We show how this framework can be used to derive survivability measures based on different definitions and extend it to other measures not covered by current definitions which can provide helpful information for better understanding of system steady state and transient behaviors under failures/attacks. Markov models Also, this paper puts forward a survivability evaluation model, SQEM (survivability quantitative evaluation model), which is developed and solved to depict various aspects of information system survivability. Then it defines the measurement factors and parses the survivability mathematically, introduces state change probability and the idea of setting the weights of survivability factors dynamically into the evaluating process of SQEM, which improved the accuracy of evaluation. An example is presented to illustrate the way SQEM works, which demonstrated the validity and feasibility of the method.