An Ontological Approach to Secure MANET Management

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) rely on dynamic configuration decisions to efficiently operate in a rapidly changing environment of limited resources. The ability of a MANET to make decisions that accurately reflect the real environment depends on the quality of the input to those decisions. However, collecting and processing of the multitudinous factors related to the operation of a MANET is a significant challenge. Equally significant in current approaches to dynamic MANET management is the lack of consideration given to security factors. We show how our ontology of MANET attributes including device security and performance characteristics can be leveraged to efficiently and effectively make dynamic configuration decisions for managing a MANET.