Dependable and Trustworthy Information System under Regional Restrictions

Companies that keep offices in China face many problems that seldom exist in developed countries, i.e., politically motivated restrictions, quality of networks and work ethics of employees. This paper examines examples we have experienced in supporting those companies, and illustrates how we achieve dependable and trustworthy information systems in such an environment. The architecture we apply is a kind of cloud-based system, where both important data and application programs to process them are located out of the country so that risks and threats caused by restrictions peculiar to the region. Since network connections are not reliable, partly because of technology and partly politics, multiple paths to reach headquarters are prepared and routers in offices automatically select one to achieve the best performance of distributed systems.