Scalable, autonomous monitoring and response for network communications reliability

Ensuring availability of network resources is a challenging task, requiring considerable amounts of human time and expertise. An automated system is needed to monitor the behavior of the network and take preventive and corrective measures to maximize network health. Such a system must meet objectives in scalability, survivability, interoperability, robustness, trustworthiness, and adaptability. Signature-based attack, intrusion and fault detection is impossible, not only due to the fact that an effective system must recognize, respond to and recover from network degradations whose causes have not previously been observed, but also because of the diversity and complexity of computer networks. Stonier Henke Associates has made significant progress in enhancing network availability and security with our multi-agent system for network resource reliability (MASRR), a decentralized architecture of autonomous, collaborative agents that can model normal network operations, detect departures from expected behaviors, and take remedial actions. A unique adaptive anomaly-detection algorithm supports automatic construction of highly customized baseline models while avoiding brittleness. This, teamed with intelligent agent reasoning capabilities, bring our system's "alarm" accuracy in line with that required of automated response systems. To satisfy military communications needs in tactical environments, agents may additionally be enhanced with goal-oriented planning, enabling the system to protect or find alternatives to the resources most critical for achieving mission objectives.