Trustworthiness
In order to understand the role of the Advisory Committee on Trustworthy Systems (ACTS), it is necessary to understand the concept of Trustworthiness.
Facets
Trustworthiness, as coordinated by ACTS, and the precursor activities from the UK Government National Cyber Security Programme (NCSP), is defined as being a "meta-protective" concept, that embraces 5 "SRARS" Facets that are often treated as seperately:
- Security, meaning that Confidentiality and Privacy are protected
- Resilience, meaning that consideration is given to Robustness and Recovery
- Availablity, meaning that things function when requested
- Reliability, meaning that functions continue, including considering Maintainability
- Safety, meaning that injury or other danger is minimised
Stovepipes
A challenge with adopting a truly Trustworthy approach to Systems is that "stovepipes" - corpora of knowledge and communities of practice - have grown up, and there is a resistance to adopting the wider lens.
Applicability
The work of ACTS aims to establish a Pareto Effective set of concepts and measures that addresses all 5 Facets of SRARS.
By following the Trustworthy Systems Approach, therefore, the majority of the considerations for all 5 Facets should have been met, meaning that any stovepipe-specfic concerns should normally only require minor "top up" activity.