Information Assurance Run-time Auditing (IARA)

Capabilities of large-scale software intensive systems such as those of interest to the Software Producibility Initiative are built incrementally within the overarching infrastructure. This requires frequent updates/extensions to integrate processes and to ensure expedient, fault tolerant, secure and robust operations. The potentially widespread impact made by incorporation of new capabilities coupled with the criticality of system operations may dictate incorporation of untrusted components without strict a prior verification. However, technologies to monitor, control, and verify discrete run-time software components are the subject of on-going research and development. They provide software monitoring at different granularities (i.e. network, operating system and application level) and sometimes for a distinct type of domain. While many of these technologies have gained a level of maturity and acceptance for host-level systems, there is currently limited research underway to substantiate their applicability to large scale software intensive systems on which there are unique quality constraints, and within which there is vast heterogeneity components, and interaction processes. To this end, Sentar and the University of Tulsa propose the Information Assurance Run-time Auditing (IARA) concept as a framework to promote the specification of software system monitoring, audit, analysis and threat mitigation capabilities in large scale software intensive systems.