Efficiency vs. security: information technology consolidations-resilience, complexity, and monoculture

Download
Author
Ricker, Jennifer L.
Date
2018-03Advisor
Lewis, Ted G.
Jasper, Scott
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Governmental organizations commonly seek to cut costs and increase efficiency through consolidation and standardization of information technology (IT) infrastructure. This may result in vulnerabilities not typically considered by policymakers, due to concentration and homogenization of critical assets, elimination of redundancy and surge capacity, and tightly coupled systems. This thesis reviewed the potential vulnerabilities that may exist in consolidated IT systems due to the effects of complexity, self-organized criticality, and monoculture, and shows that efficient systems carry inherent vulnerabilities. Because we cannot mitigate every possible threat, hazard, or vulnerability, IT professionals should focus on system resilience. Resilience of a system is counter-proportional to the product of vulnerability and spectral radius; therefore, any increase in vulnerability, spectral radius, or both decreases resilience. A reduction in overall vulnerability can compensate for increased self-organization and other losses of resilience through a variety of recommended actions. Many of those actions come with a cost-organizations will have to determine the tradeoffs they are willing to make between efficiency and security.
Rights
Copyright is reserved by the copyright owner.Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
GPS: public utility or software platform?
Thibault, Marc A., Jr. (Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School, 2016-09);The Global Positioning System (GPS), a satellite navigation system, is critical to the United States' (U.S.) national and homeland security. The U.S. has made GPS resilient to interruption by flying more satellites than ... -
Simulation of physical and media access control (MAC) for resilient and scalable wireless sensor networks
Chia, Daniel Kim Boon. (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2006-03);The resilience of wireless sensor networks is investigated. A key concept is that scale-free network principles can be adapted to artificially create resilient wireless sensor networks. As scale-free networks are known ... -
Building school resilience in an era of multiple threats
Van Sparrentak, Kenneth J. (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2008-09);There is a lack of attention towards the process of recovery in U.S. schools despite their vulnerability to natural and intentional threats with the potential of creating mass casualties. By promoting resilience as a ...