Dependability: Basic Concepts and Terminology

This volume results from several years of work performed within the IFIP WG 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance, together with its French, German, Italian and Japanese versions. The aim is to give precise definitions characterizing the dependability of computing systems. Dependability is first introduced as a global concept and a set of basic definitions is given. Those definitions are then commented upon and supplemented in the subsequent sections, which deal with the impairments to dependability (faults, errors, failures), the means for dependability (fault-prevention, fault-tolerance, fault-removal, fault-forcasting), and the attributes of dependability (reliability, safety, security, availability). The 118 definitions given throughout the text are recapitulated in a glossary, and a give-language cross-index is provided.