[ PROOFECONOMY ]™GlossaryOriginSpecsEngagement Modes (In-Situ and Independent Test Lab)
An Engagement is one commissioned Mine Plan against one Device Under Test, from Engagement Manifest to Performance Record. It runs in one of two modes: In-Situ, in the Implementor's own environment, or Independent Test Lab, in a replica with no path to production. Provider-Run is not a mode; it is forbidden.
In-Situ Mode
The system under test is the Implementor’s own environment, in a declared Environment Class, with the Provider’s product deployed as it would be in service.
- The testing equipment is operated by the Implementor, by parties it commissions, or by an Independent Test Lab acting for it. The Provider occupies no seam.
- In
productionandpre-production, Production Stream Mode is the normative form. Inqaanddev, Bounded Mode runs may be used. - Destructive canaries and Jailed Canary Protocol runs never run in
production. - The Proof Witness should be the Implementor’s security operations function or an auditor it appoints. It is never the Provider.
Independent Test Lab Mode
The system under test is a lab-replica built by the Lab from a Parity Declaration agreed with the Implementor, or, for a Provider-sponsored Engagement with no Implementor, from a published Reference Environment.
- The replica has no network path to any Implementor production system.
- The Lab may occupy the Issuer, Release Driver, Ingress Observer, Fingerprint Capture, Liveness Prober and Adjudicator seams. The Proof Witness must be a party other than the Lab and its affiliates: the Implementor, an auditor or a second laboratory. An Engagement in which the Lab operates the Witness is not a Coal Mine Protocol Engagement.
- This is the modernized form of the old lab report: the attack set is committed and mutated, the Provider’s claims are graded, publication is mandatory and the Sponsor has no seam.
The Implementor
The Implementor is the party that operates, or intends to operate, the system the control is deployed in, and whose infrastructure or commission produces the Performance Record. An Independent Test Lab operates a Mine Plan in a replica on commission, with no commercial interest in the outcome beyond its disclosed fee.
Related terms
- Coal Mine Protocol (Proof of Performance Engagement)
- Environment Class and Parity Declaration
- Proof Witness
- Provider-Run Mode (forbidden)
- Self-Provided Engagement