Incorporating Service Degradations into a Security Plan

Computer systems invest substantial resources in securing their services. Costs of failure prevention are balanced against those of detection and recovery, both of which typically involve substantial degradations. Most computer users consider degradations of service to be insidious and injurious. Yet, degradations commonly assist in both the prevention and the curtailment of failures. Their toleration enables service continuation following fault activation, during which degradations are monitored for symptoms of security breaches. A systematic approach to degradations should be incorporated into security plans. We propose a template in which service degradations are classified according to their usage and their impact on services within the different stages of a system's lifecycle. Such standardization will promote system security.