A Situation-Aware Information Infrastructure

复原力是通信系统和统一的信通技术环境的一项重要属性，主要通过基础设施冗余、静态安全和网络控制(例如，通过多路径路由协议、基于签名的入侵检测系统)来实现。这主要产生了服务和位置特定的整体解决方案，并保护基础设施免受一组静态且定义明确的威胁的影响。然而，目前的办法没有纳入、也没有利用当今信通技术环境中可获得的大量时空信息，如传感、日志、分组数据或外部全球媒体馈送。可以利用来自统一在信通技术基础设施上的不同环境的不同数据和信息源来创建态势感知，并可帮助保护基础设施免受一系列动态和新出现的对抗事件的影响(例如，避免由于复杂性和集中化而导致的新型故障，以及拒绝服务攻击和自然灾害)，而当前的静态方法无法提供[1][2][3]。与此同时，当今的信通技术环境正在演变为关键的、任务关键的社会经济系统，其最佳性能取决于自适应和智能方案，以确保在合法或恶意对抗事件发生时有弹性地运行。为了实现这一目标，需要有一个合适的仪器、测量、分析和控制基础设施，该基础设施将与统一的网络环境进行本机操作，并为其增加智能。在这个项目中，我们建议设计和开发一个通用的、有弹性的和适应性强的情况感知信息基础设施，以预测和应对网络面临的广泛挑战。我们的目标是提供新颖而实用的机制，通过利用相关的内部(受监控的)和外部(全球媒体馈送)时空信息(即我们所称的“上下文”)的“大数据”集，使人们能够更深入地了解关键任务系统的动态和非静态演变。我们的机制将作为协议套件纳入软件定义的体系结构中，并作为本地组件集成在(未来)计算机网络设计中。该项目的目的不仅仅是将现成的解决方案纳入一个统一的计划，而是要重新审视关键任务信通技术环境中的复原力挑战，并为这类工作的信息处理、算法、联网和系统方面提出新的解决办法。这项研究将在兰开斯特大学和格拉斯哥大学联合进行，研究人员将拥有广泛的专业知识(从弹性和自主通信，到网络仪器和管理，再到信息检索)，并与安全关键系统(NatS)、工业控制网络(EADS-IW)和硬件加速定制计算产品(Solarflare)领域的许多领先工业合作伙伴合作。该联盟将确保交付具有直接工业适用性的优秀研究成果，并对未来的智能关键任务基础设施产生变革性影响。[1]。Windows Azure服务中断：http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/08/02/root-cause-analysis-for-recent-windows-azure-service-interruption-in-western-europe.aspx[2].都柏林Airport:http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9110319/Dublin_Airport_radar_system_brought_down_by_faulty_network_card[3].空中交通管理系统故障停电打击伦敦Data Centre:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/10/data_centre_power_cut/

Resilience is a vital property of communications systems and unified ICT environments, and is achieved mainly by infrastructural redundancy, and static security and network control (e.g., through multipath routing protocols, signature-based intrusion detection systems). This results in mostly monolithic solutions that are service and location-specific, and they protect the infrastructure against a static and well-defined set of threats. However, current approaches do not incorporate, nor do they take advantage of, the wealth of spatio-temporal information available in today's ICT environments, such as sensing, logs, packet data, or external global media feeds. Such diverse data and information sources from heterogeneous environments unified over ICT infrastructures can be exploited to create situation awareness, and can help protect the infrastructure from a range of dynamic and emerging adversarial events (e.g., from new types of failures due to complexity and centralisation, to denial of service attacks and natural disasters) that current static approaches fail to provide [1][2][3].At the same time, today's ICT environments are evolving as crucial, mission-critical socio-economic systems, and their optimal performance depends on adaptive and intelligent schemes to ensure resilient operation at the onset of legitimate or malicious adversarial events. In order to realise this aim, there needs to be a suitable instrumentation, measurement, analysis, and control infrastructure that will operate natively with, and add intelligence to, the unified networked environment. In this project, we propose to design and develop a generic, resilient and adaptive situation-aware information infrastructure that would predict and confront the broad range of challenges faced by the network. We aim to provide novel and practical mechanisms that will enable a deeper understanding of the dynamic and non-stationary evolution of mission-critical systems through harnessing 'big data' sets of relevant internal (monitored) and external (global media feeds) spatio-temporal information - what we call 'context'. Our mechanisms will be incorporated as a protocol suite within a Software-Defined architecture, integrated as a native component in (future) computer networks design. This project is not simply aiming at integrating off-the-shelf solutions into a unified scheme, but rather to revisit the resilience challenge in mission-critical ICT environments and contribute new solutions to the information processing, algorithmic, networking and systems aspects of such undertakings. The research will be carried out over two years jointly at the Universities of Lancaster and Glasgow, involving investigators with a wide range of expertise (from resilient and autonomic communications, through network instrumentation and management, to information retrieval) and in collaboration with a number of leading industrial partners in the areas of safety-critical systems (NATS), industrial control networks (EADS-IW), and hardware-accelerated custom computation products (Solarflare). This consortium will ensure delivery of excellent research results with direct industrial applicability and transformative effects on future intelligent mission-critical infrastructures. [1]. Windows Azure service interruption: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/08/02/root-cause-analysis-for-recent-windows-azure-service-interruption-in-western-europe.aspx[2]. Air Traffic Management system malfunction at Dublin Airport:http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9110319/Dublin_Airport_radar_system_brought_down_by_faulty_network_card[3]. Power outage hits London Data Centre:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/10/data_centre_power_cut/