Applications of Covering Arrays in Cyber Risk and Security Compliance

With the integration of once independent control systems into business networks there lies a major security risk that organizations may not be prepared to assess or manage effectively. Without proper testing, these real-time systems are vulnerable to attack which creates a significant risk to the reliability and integrity of these systems. With the use of a mathematical object, the Error Locating Array (ELA), we are able to detect errors in the system whenever the structure of the faulty interactions satisfies certain reasonable assumptions. The main goal of this project is to integrate the ELA and it's generalizations into the current testing packages of Wurldtech. We will also be working with the design team at Wurldtech to assess how good of a fit our mathematical model of a Covering Array is to their testing environment and if possible design new mathematical generalizations of the Covering Array to match the needs of the organization. The benefits to Wurldtech would be that at the end of this project they will have significant data to determine the usefulness of ELA's in their current testing methods and have full ELA implementations to use.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Brett Stevens

Student:

Gary Bazdell

Partner:

Wurldtech Security Technologies Inc.

Discipline:

Mathematics

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

Carleton University