Information Survivability: Required Shifts in Perspective

The events of recent years and especially of recent months have greatly increased awareness of information and infrastructure security, whether they are media reports of the latest cyber attacks and vulnerabilities or postulations as to the degree of permeability of our critical infrastructures. While this may spark reactions such as reviews of organizational computer security policies and vulnerability assessments, attention to issues of security, while important, cannot ensure the preservation of mission-critical services when systems are penetrated or compromised.

Survivability, an emerging discipline, incorporates a new technical and business perspective on security, creating solutions that focus on elements such as the continuity of critical services. In terms of solution space, security takes a technology centric point of view, with each technology solving a specific set of issues and concerns that are generally separate and distinct from one another.

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