Engineering Commons^™

Proceedings Of The 2009 Nrc Federal Facilities Council/James Madison University Symposium On Protecting Large Facility Complexes;, George H. Baker, Cheryl E. Wilkins

George H Baker

Large, complex facilities pose unique protection challenges involving multidisciplinary expertise and collaboration among government, academia, and the private sector. The symposium served as a forum for sharing experiences in dealing with large facility catastrophic events and risk management. The symposium was organized based on the value of interaction among different people representing diverse disciplines. In many instances, such interactions lead to solutions that would not have been developed within disciplinary stovepipes. The venue was divided into three panels addressing physical security, cyber security, and real facility case studies. We were also privileged to have three keynote speakers including Dr. Charles …

Beyond K-Anonymity: A Decision Theoretic Framework For Assessing Privacy Risk, Guy Lebanon, Monica Scannapieco, Mohamed Fouad, Elisa Bertino

Cyber Center Publications

An important issue any organization or individual has to face when managing data containing sensitive information, is the risk that can be incurred when releasing such data. Even though data may be sanitized before being released, it is still possible for an adversary to reconstruct the original data using additional information thus resulting in privacy violations. To date, however, a systematic approach to quantify such risks is not available. In this paper we develop a framework, based on statistical decision theory, that assesses the relationship between the disclosed data and the resulting privacy risk. We model the problem of deciding …

Cascading Infrastructure Failures: Avoidance And Response, George H. Baker, Cheryl J. Elliott

George H Baker

No critical infrastructure is self-sufficient. The complexity inherent in the interdependent nature of infrastructure systems complicates planning and preparedness for system failures. Recent wide-scale disruption of infrastructure on the Gulf Coast due to weather, and in the Northeast due to electric power network failures, dramatically illustrate the problems associated with mitigating cascading effects and responding to cascading infrastructure failures once they have occurred.

The major challenge associated with preparedness for cascading failures is that they transcend system, corporate, and political boundaries and necessitate coordination among multiple, disparate experts and authorities. This symposium brought together concerned communities including government and industry …