Smart mediation and reaction system for protecting interdependent critical infrastructures

• US 7,948,377 B2
• Filed: 09/16/2008
• Issued: 05/24/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: WSOU Investments, LLC (WSOU Holdings, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Bulut, Evren, Ansiaux, Arnaud
• Primary Examiner(s): PHAM, TOAN NGOC
• Application Number:
  US12/211,396
• Publication Number:
  US 20090079562A1
• Time in Patent Office: 980 Days
• Field of Search: 340/540, 340/541, 340/3.1, 340/3.43, 340/3.44, 705/318, 705/325, 370/242, 370/241
• US Class Current: 340/540
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/06 Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5003 Managing SLA; Interaction between SLA and QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5025 by proactively reacting to service quality change, e.g. by reconfiguration after service quality degradation or upgrade
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 by checking functioning

Abstract

To monitor the functioning of the services of a first infrastructure (CI1) upon which the functioning of the critical services of a second infrastructure (CI2) depend, a server (SS) capable of communicating with both infrastructures receives, upon the detection of a failure of a service of the first infrastructure by a first terminal (CT1) included within the first infrastructure, an identifier (SI) for the faulty service sent from the first terminal. The server transmits a request to the first terminal in order to retrieve the characteristics settings values of the faulty service, and apply correlation rules to the retrieved values in order to produce information relevant to the functioning of the faulty service. The server transmits a message (SPM) containing the produced information to a second terminal (CT2) included within the second infrastructure, so that the second infrastructure can react to the failure of a service of the first infrastructure.

Claims

1. A method for monitoring the functioning of services in a first infrastructure upon which the functioning of critical services of a second infrastructure depends, said method comprising the following steps within a server capable of communicating with both infrastructures:

upon the detection of a failure of a service of the first infrastructure by a first terminal included within the first infrastructure, receiving an identifier of the faulty service sent from the first terminal,

transmitting a request to the first terminal in order to retrieve characteristics settings values of the faulty service,

applying correlation rules to the retrieved values to produce information related to a status of the faulty service, and

transmitting a message containing the produced information to a second terminal included within the second infrastructure.

2. The method in accordance with claim 1, in which the message is transmitted at a given moment based on time settings values for a critical service in the second infrastructure that depends on the faulty service.

3. The method in accordance with claim 1, in which the message is transmitted at a given moment that is further based on characteristics settings values for the faulty service.

4. The method in accordance with claim 1, further comprising transmitting an alert message to the second terminal if a characteristics setting value is outside a range of predetermined values.

5. The method in accordance with claim 1, further comprising:

retrieving values of other characteristics settings of the faulty service,

applying correlation rules to the retrieved values in order to produce information related to the status of the faulty service, and

transmitting another message containing produced information to the second terminal included within the second infrastructure.

6. The method in accordance with claim 1, in which the message contains a time limit for retrieving the values of other characteristics settings.

7. The method in accordance with claim 1, further comprising:

generating a matrix showing dependencies between critical services of the second infrastructure and services of the first infrastructure,

associating time settings to each of said critical services of the second infrastructure,

defining settings characteristics of each service of the first infrastructure upon which a critical service in the second infrastructure depends,

defining correlation rules for combining characteristics settings values of a faulty service, and

saving the dependency matrix, time settings, characteristics settings, and correlation rules into a database linked to the server.

8. A server for monitoring the functioning of services of a first infrastructure upon which the function of critical services of a second infrastructure depends, the server being capable of communicating with both infrastructures, said server comprising:

means for receiving, upon a detection of a failure of a service of the first infrastructure by a first terminal included within the first infrastructure, an identifier of the faulty service sent from the first terminal,

means for transmitting a request to the first terminal in order to retrieve characteristics settings values of the faulty service,

means for applying correlation rules to the retrieved values, in order to produce information related to the status of the faulty service, and

means for transmitting a message containing the produced information to a second terminal included within the second infrastructure.