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Anti-fragile ICT systems
Hole K., Springer International Publishing, New York, NY, 2016. 151 pp. Type: Book (978-3-319300-68-9)
Date Reviewed: Mar 31 2017

Large, complex information and communications technology (ICT) systems need to have been designed so that unexpected stressors and events do not cause the systems to fail. This is particularly important where a system failure could have dire consequences, as in passenger aircraft flight control systems.

A system that is easily broken is referred to as fragile. One that is thoroughly tested and debugged is generally called robust. Taleb [1] takes this one step further and describes systems such as the human immune system that actually thrive when stressed, referring to them as anti-fragile. In this book, Hole extends Taleb’s proposal to ICT systems, modeling large, distributed ICT systems as complex adaptive systems in order to understand the components needed for systems to be anti-fragile to specific stress events.

The book is divided into five parts. Part 1 begins with the introduction of the main ideas. Chapter 1 introduces the needs of modern society for trustworthy, large, complex ICT systems and the consequences were these systems to fail. Taleb’s concept of anti-fragility is introduced along with the high-level ideas of how complex adaptive systems can be used to avoid system failure, and Hole introduces the three areas that will be used to illustrate the application of anti-fragility: downtime, malware, and anomaly detection.

Chapter 2 discusses risk and the probability and impact of ICT system failures, including Taleb’s four-quadrant map for classifying the impact of failures in complex adaptive ICT systems. Chapter 3 discusses the need for system users to have trust in that system, and chapter 4 discusses the four system design principles of modularity, weak links, redundancy, and diversity, as well as the fail fast operating principle, which are proposed to deliver anti-fragile systems.

Part 2 discusses how anti-fragility can create highly available systems that avoid downtime. Each of the three chapters looks at the five design and operational principles for a different detailed case study. Chapter 5 examines the high availability of Netflix’s public cloud media streaming solution, chapter 6 considers the Norwegian e-government system, and chapter 7 looks at keeping Norway’s telecommunications infrastructure running without downtime.

The three chapters of Part 3 consider anti-fragility design principles as an alternative to the more usual signature-based techniques for malware detection. Chapter 8 examines how various techniques that conform to the software diversity principle can make systems robust to malware. Chapter 9 discusses preventing reinfection, and chapter 10 focuses on preventing malware spreading over large networks.

The two chapters of Part 4 introduce a hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) learning algorithm and detail how this algorithm can detect anomalies in real-time streaming data in complex adaptive ICT systems, making it an ideal solution for monitoring cloud applications.

The final chapter, which is Part 5, summarizes the book’s main insights into anti-fragile ICT systems and discusses the need for further work in the area.

The book is part of the new “Simula SpringerBriefs on Computing” series, aimed at presenting short synopses of various specialized technical topics. This small book is packed with technical detail and well supported with figures and examples. There is a thorough table of contents, a good index, and a list of references. Hole describes techniques that will likely be useful for successfully constructing complex, adaptive ICT systems and illustrates these with several detailed case studies. All in all, this is a good, detailed introduction to this relatively new area of anti-fragile ICT systems.

Reviewer:  David B. Henderson Review #: CR145160 (1706-0330)
1) Taleb, N. N. Antifragile: things that gain from disorder. Random House, New York, NY, 2012.
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