INFORMATION INVASION IN ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS - Modelling, simulating and analysing system-level information propagation

With the proliferation of internet-based technologies within and between organisations, large-scale enterprise systems are becoming more interconnected than ever before. A significant problem facing these organisations is how their information systems will cope with inconsistency being introduced from external data sources. Major problems arise when low quality information enters an authoritative enterprise system from these external sources, and in so doing gains credibility. This problem is compounded by the propagation of this information to other systems and other enterprises, potentially 'invading' an inter-enterprise network. In this paper we will introduce and examine this behaviour, which we term 'information invasion'. Characterisation of systems that are most vulnerable from such an occurrence is provided, and details of an experiment are given which simulates information invasion on an example network topology.