Secure Agile Agent-Oriented System DESIGN
Location: University Kabul / Afghanistan Time: Autumn term 2014
Learning objective: To allow the student a possibility of acquiring knowledge about system-level thinkig about security and dependability. Additionally, The objective of this course is to provide an overview of the secure and dependable design process of modern multi-agent based information systems and its work products (models and program code) roughly following the principles of Model-Driven Architecture (MDA).
Short description: The first course block gives the main definitions relating to dependability, a generic concept including as special case such attributes as reliability, availability, safety, integrity, maintainability, etc. Security brings in concerns for confidentiality, in addition to availability and integrity. Basic definitions are given first. They are then commented upon, and supplemented by additional definitions, which address the threats to dependability and security (faults, errors, failures), their attributes, and the means for their achievement (fault prevention, fault tolerance, fault removal, fault forecasting). The aim is to explicate a set of general concepts, of relevance across a wide range of situations and, therefore, helping communication and cooperation among a number of scientific and technical communities, including ones that are concentrating on particular types of system, of system failures, or of causes of system failures.
In the second course block we aim to apply the notions of security and dependability while recognizing we live in the distributed world. The distributed world should be supported by distributed rather than centralized information systems. Considering this, the emphasis of this course is on the development of intelligent information systems, where the solution for the end user is delivered through interactions between different nodes of a network rather than by one centralized node. Examples of such systems include crowdsourcing system based on social networking services, such as Facebook or Twitter, as well as applications that negotiate for each day or even hour the best possible price for electricity for a given household. The method of the course is viewing such systems as multi-agent systems that consist of reactive, proactive, and social software entities – agents – representing their owners. We use the concept of agent because it helps to create intelligent applications that act on behalf of their owners, and interact and exchange knowledge with other similar applications of other users.