Systems Engineering for the Digital Age

Chapter 25The “FOREST” Concept and Meta‐Model for Lifecycle Evaluation of Resilience

Tim Sherburne¹, Megan M. Clifford², Barry M. Horowitz³, Tom McDermott², and Peter A. Beling¹

¹ Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Hume Center for National Security and Technology, Blacksburg, VA, USA

² Stevens Institute of Technology, School for Systems and Enterprises, Hoboken, NJ, USA

³ University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

The Framework for Operational Resilience in Engineering and System Test (FOREST)

Introduction and Background

The Department of Defense (DoD) is increasing efforts to address the operational risks posed by cyber‐attacks and insider threats by utilizing system assurance and system resilience. System assurance refers to the confidence that a system is free of exploitable vulnerabilities and operates as intended, while system resilience refers to a system's ability to recover from a loss of function. The system resilience approach allows for early consideration of cyber risks in the systems engineering process and can be analyzed in terms of system functions prior to the design stage (Reed 2016; Ross 2022).

Digital engineering and model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) are widely used in the conception, design, integration, and validation of mission‐critical systems, but there is still a lack of integrated modeling and dynamic simulation support for systems engineering in terms of operational and cyber resilience from concept to design. The development ...