This book introduces a novel approach to the design and operation of large ICT systems. It views the technical solutions and their stakeholders as complex adaptive systems and argues that traditional risk analyses cannot predict all future incidents with major impacts. To avoid unacceptable events, it is necessary to establish and operate anti-fragile ICT systems that limit the impact of all incidents, and which learn from small-impact incidents how to function increasingly well in changing environments.
The book applies four design principles and one operational principle to achieve anti-fragility for different classes of incidents. It discusses how systems can achieve high availability, prevent malware epidemics, and detect anomalies. Analyses of Netflix’s media streaming solution, Norwegian telecom infrastructures, e-government platforms, and Numenta’s anomaly detection software show that cloud computing is essential to achieving anti-fragility forclasses of events with negative impacts.
Kjell Jørgen Hole holds a full-time position as aprofessor at the Department of Informatics, University of Bergen (UiB) and apart-time position as the head of the security department at the SimulaResearch Laboratory in Oslo. At the time of this writing, he is part of a jointeffort between UiB and Simula to form a new cyber security researchgroup.
While Kjell completed his PhD in coding theory at UiB,he did most of his thesis work at the University of California, San Diego,where he worked at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research (CMRR).
Kjell was also a postdoctoral researcher at IBMAlmaden Research Center in Silicon Valley, where he conducted research on convolutionalcodes and artificial neural networks. Later, he worked on trellis codedmodulation at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. During thisperiod, Kjell mainly published his research in IEEE Transactions onInformation Theory and IEEE Transactions on Communications.
Kjell eventually switched fields from coding theory tocyber security because he wanted to pursue more applied research. His firstresearch group in the field of security became infamous in Norway for a fewyears because it shattered local myths about information technology systemshigh degree of security and privacy. The group published articles in the IEEEmagazines Security & Privacy and Computer.
Kjell enjoys teaching and working with students.Through the years he has supervised many masters and PhD students. At UiB, hedeveloped and taught courses and seminars in introductory programming, codingtheory, information security, anti-fragile systems, and communication standardssuch as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. He has also given many talks to Norwegian industryand written feature articles about security in Norwegian newspapers.
Together with two of his PhD students, Kjell founded asecurity consultancy. Today, he is a board member of mCASH, a company operatinga mobile payment solution in Norway.
