Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In today’s society, we are dependent on a number of services provided by interconnected systems. These services may be anything from electricity to services provided by social media platforms. Interconnected systems are challenging to analyze from a quality perspective in general and from a security perspective in particular. The systems depend on each other through services. Thus, the quality of services provided by one system is often directly linked to the quality of services provided by another. Moreover, the systems may be under different managerial control and within different jurisdictions, and the systems may evolve rapidly in a manner that may be difficult to predict. All of this makes it challenging to assess risk to the quality of services. In this thesis we present a framework for analyzing and monitoring the impact of dependencies on quality. More specifically, the framework should be used in the context of interconnected systems to analyze and monitor the impact of service dependencies on quality of services. The framework is the result of the integration of three artifacts: (1) a method for designing indicators to monitor the fulfillment of business objectives with particular focus on quality and ICT-supported monitoring of indicators; (2) a method for capturing and monitoring the impact of service dependencies on the quality of provided services; and (3) an architectural pattern for constructing enterprise level monitoring tools based on indicators. The three artifacts may be viewed as contributions on their own, since they can be used independently of each other. In addition, the thesis contributes in terms of two industrial case studies: (1) an empirical study on trust-based decisions in nterconnected systems; and (2) an empirical study on the design of indicators for monitoring risk. The industrial case studies have mainly been carried out to support the development of the artifacts, but since the industrial case studies also provide insight into issues of a more general nature, they may be seen as contributions on their own.
Author: Olav Skjelkvåle Ligaarden
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: European Commission, Norges Forskningsråd
OpenAlex ID: W2181566208