Living in the comfort zone

Abstract

A comfort zone is a tested region of a system's input space within which it has been observed to behave acceptably. To keep systems operating within their comfort zones, we advocate the interposition of rectifiers between systems and their input sources. Rectifiers are designed to transform inputs to ensure that they are within the comfort zone before they are presented to the system. Rectifiers enforce a highly constrained input format and, if necessary, discard information to force inputs to conform to this format. Potential benefits of this approach include the elimination of errors and vulnerabilities, the excision of undesirable excess functionality from large, complex systems, and a simplification of the computing environment.