Detection and resolution of normative conflicts in multi-agent systems : a literature survey

Peer reviewedPostprin

A Web-Based Tool for Analysing Normative Documents in English

Our goal is to use formal methods to analyse normative documents written in English, such as privacy policies and service-level agreements. This requires the combination of a number of different elements, including information extraction from natural language, formal languages for model representation, and an interface for property specification and verification. We have worked on a collection of components for this task: a natural language extraction tool, a suitable formalism for representing such documents, an interface for building models in this formalism, and methods for answering queries asked of a given model. In this work, each of these concerns is brought together in a web-based tool, providing a single interface for analysing normative texts in English. Through the use of a running example, we describe each component and demonstrate the workflow established by our tool

Knowledge Representation Concepts for Automated SLA Management

Outsourcing of complex IT infrastructure to IT service providers has increased substantially during the past years. IT service providers must be able to fulfil their service-quality commitments based upon predefined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with the service customer. They need to manage, execute and maintain thousands of SLAs for different customers and different types of services, which needs new levels of flexibility and automation not available with the current technology. The complexity of contractual logic in SLAs requires new forms of knowledge representation to automatically draw inferences and execute contractual agreements. A logic-based approach provides several advantages including automated rule chaining allowing for compact knowledge representation as well as flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing business requirements. We suggest adequate logical formalisms for representation and enforcement of SLA rules and describe a proof-of-concept implementation. The article describes selected formalisms of the ContractLog KR and their adequacy for automated SLA management and presents results of experiments to demonstrate flexibility and scalability of the approach.Comment: Paschke, A. and Bichler, M.: Knowledge Representation Concepts for Automated SLA Management, Int. Journal of Decision Support Systems (DSS), submitted 19th March 200

Expression and deployment of reaction policies

International audienceCurrent prevention techniques provide restrictive responses that may take a local reaction in a limited information system infrastructure. In this paper, an in depth and comprehensive approach is introduced for responding to intrusions in an efficient way. This approach considers not only the threat and the architecture of the monitored information system, but also the security policy. The proposed reaction workflow links the lowest level of the information system corresponding to intrusion detection mechanisms, including misuse and anomaly techniques, and access control techniques with the higher level of the security policy. This reaction workflow evaluates the intrusion alerts at three different levels, it then reacts against threats with appropriate counter measures in each level accordingly

Policies to Regulate Distributed Data Exchange

This research is partially sponsored by the EPSRC grant EP/P011829/1, funded under the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Council Human Dimensions of Cyber Security call (2016).Postprin

The use and effectiveness of migration controls as a counter-terrorism instrument in the European Union

This article examines the use and effectiveness of migration controls as an instrument to fight terrorism in the European Union (EU). It examines the evolution of the role of migration controls in the EU counter-terrorism policy, through an analysis of the migration control measures that are already part of the EU counter-terrorism policy and those that are currently under discussion. It shows that migration control measures have become increasingly important in the EU counter-terrorism policy, especially since 2004, and that this trend is set to continue given the significant number of proposals currently being negotiated in this policy area. The article argues that it is a problematic development, as the effectiveness of migration controls in the fight against terrorism is questionable in the case of the EU. It is even more questionable when one considers the negative externalities of some of the EU measures that have been adopted or are currently under discussion

Contract related agents

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