Security-Informed Safety Case Approach to Analysing MILS Systems

Safety cases are the development foundation for safety-critical systems and are often quite complex to understand depending on the size of the system and operational conditions. The recent advent of security aspects complicates the issues further. This paper describes an approach to analysing safety and security in a structured way and creating security-informed safety cases that provide justification of safety taking into particular consideration the impact of security. The paper includes an overview of the structured assurance case concept, a security-informed safety methodology and a layered approach to constructing cases. The approach is applied to a Security Gateway that is used to control data flow between security domains in a separation kernel based operating system in avionics environment. We show that a clear and structured way of presenting a safety case combining safety and security alleviates understanding important interactions taking into account the impact and, hence, increases safety

Investigation into a Layered Approach to Architecting Security-Informed Safety Cases

The paper describes a layered approach to analysing safety and security in a structured way and creating a security-informed safety case. The approach is applied to a case study – a Security Gateway controlling data flow between two different security domains implemented with a separation kernel based operating system in an avionics environment. We discuss some findings from the case study, show how the approach identifies and ameliorates important interactions between safety and security and supports the development of complex assurance case structures

“My kid, my rule”: Governing children’s digital footprints as a source of dialectical tensions between mothers and daughters-in-law

This paper reports on findings from an exploratory study on social media dilemmas (SMDs) mothers experience about their children’s social media presence when their mothers-in-law share about their offspring online, violating their boundaries expectations. The work is theoretically informed by systems theory and communication privacy management theory. A parenting forum was researched to investigate how mothers themselves frame these dilemmatic situations through a thematic analysis of a sample of 1224 posts from 38 discussion threads focusing on these issues. This work shows the disorienting nature of SMDs leading mothers to seek support through online communication. Findings from this study further suggest that sharing about minors on social media can cause dialectical tensions between interacting systems (i. e. the nuclear and the extended family), with mothers claiming and expecting first-level agency in managing their children’s digital footprints to foster systemic differentiation in the digital home

Regulatory Compliance-oriented Impediments and Associated Effort Estimation Metrics in Requirements Engineering for Contractual Systems Engineering Projects

Large-scale contractual systems engineering projects often need to comply with a myriad of government regulations and standards as part of contractual fulfillment. A key activity in the requirements engineering (RE) process for such a project is to elicit appropriate requirements from the regulations and standards that apply to the target system. However, there are impediments in achieving compliance due to such factors as: the voluminous contract and its high-level specifications, large number of regulatory documents, and multiple domains of the system. Little empirical research has been conducted on developing a shared understanding of the compliance-oriented complexities involved in such projects, and identifying and developing RE support (such as processes, tools, metrics, and methods) to improve overall performance for compliance projects. Through three studies on an industrial RE project, we investigated a number of issues in RE concerning compliance, leading to the following novel results:(i) a meta-model that captures artefacts-types and their compliance-oriented inter-relationships that exist in RE for contractual systems engineering projects; (ii) discovery of key impediments to requirements-compliance due to: (a) contractual complexities (e.g., regulatory requirements specified non-contiguously with non-regulatory requirements in the contract at the ratio of 1:19), (b) complexities in regulatory documents (e.g., over 300 regulatory documents being relevant to the subject system), and (c) large and complex system (e.g., 40% of the contractual regulatory requirements are cross-cutting); (iii) a method for deriving base metrics for estimating the effort needed to do compliance work during RE and demonstrate how a set of derived metrics can be used to create an effort estimation model for such work; (iv) a framework for structuring diverse regulatory documents and requirements for global product developments. These results lay a foundation in RE research on compliance issues with anticipation for its impact in real-world projects and in RE research

Revitalizing cultivation and strengthening the seed systems of fonio and Bambara groundnut in Mali through a community biodiversity management approach

Fonio (Digitaria exilis(Kippist)Stapf) and Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea(L.)Verdc.) are native crops grown at a small scale in Mali that have potential to support agricultural productivity under climate change. A community biodiversity management approach was explored in this study as a means to reinforce the cultivation of these crops by increasing farmers’ access to intraspecific diversity and developing capacities of community institutions for their management. The research involved six communities in Ségou and Sikasso regions. Multiple varieties of fonio (10–12) and Bambaragroundnut (8–12) were established indiversity fields in each site over 2 years where farmers engaged in experiential learning over the crop cycle. Significant adoption of fonio and Bambara groundnut was detected in several study sites.The precise drivers of adoption cannot be definitively determined but likely include increased seed access and awareness gained through the diversity field fora, seed fairs and community seed banks. No significant yield advantage was detected for any of the varieties in the diversity fields, which showed variable performance by site and year. The number of varieties registered and managed by community seed banks in each site increased from 1–5 varieties of each crop to 11–12 varieties following the interventions. The number of Bambara groundnut varieties cultivated in farmer as light decline in fonio diversity in some communities.The results of this study can inform efforts to strengthen seed systems and cultivation of neglected and underutilized species in Africa

Crisis Narratives in International Law

This volume offers a series of short and highly self-reflective essays by leading international lawyers on how global crises inform the functioning and theorizing of international law as well as how international law addresses global crises.; Readership: This book is of immediate interest to a readership of both scholars and practitioners, International lawyers, including scholars, practitionners, PhD students, postgraduate students and International Relations scholar

Crisis Narratives in International Law

This volume offers a series of short and highly self-reflective essays by leading international lawyers on how global crises inform the functioning and theorizing of international law as well as how international law addresses global crises.; Readership: This book is of immediate interest to a readership of both scholars and practitioners, International lawyers, including scholars, practitionners, PhD students, postgraduate students and International Relations scholar