600.436
High-Assurance Systems
Fall 01/Introduction
7
Reasons for Assurance
¨The purpose of assurance is to establish confidence that
you can protect things of
value.
¨Many types of value:
–Protect because you think valuable
–Protect because your
customer thinks valuable
–Protect to meet legal requirements (HIPPA, EU Privacy,
DMCA)
–Protect because of contract requirements
¨Each of these introduces different requirements,
different types of exposure, and different
“remedies” for failure.
¨Protection is a cost/benefit tradeoff
–There is no such thing as perfect protection; only
reasonable dilligence.