Predictable configuration management in a randomized scheduling framework

Configuration management is an essential part of system administration and component based software configuration. Autonomous configuration is becoming more important with the emergence of agent technology and heterogeneous nomadic environments. One important issue in configuration management is security, as the services provided by a system is often publicly available. This article addresses security in configuration management systems and proposes strategies for increasing security by randomized scheduling of actions constrained by a set of precedence relations. The special class of time-triggered policies is security-enhanced by adding randomized time-offsets and granularity reductions. These strategies makes it more difficult for malicious parties to detect and exploit configuration patterns resulting in a reduced quality of service and ultimately a damaged system.