Metrics for Evaluating the Barrier and Time to Reverse Engineer a Product

Abstract

Reverse engineering, defined as extracting information about a product from the product itself, is a common industry practice for gaining insight into innovative products. Both the original designer and those reverse engineering the original design can benefit from estimating the time and barrier to reverse engineer a product. This paper presents a set of metrics and parameters that can be used to calculate the barrier to reverse engineer any product, as well as the time required to do so. To the original designer, these numerical representations of the barrier and time can be used to strategically identify and improve product characteristics so as to increase the difficulty and time to reverse engineer them. As the metrics and parameters developed in this paper are quantitative in nature, they can also be used in conjunction with numerical optimization techniques, thereby enabling products to be developed with a maximum reverse engineering barrier and time—at a minimum development cost. On the other hand, these quantitative measures enable competitors who reverse engineer original designs to focus their efforts on products that will result in the greatest return on investment.

Using Topology Optimization to Numerically Improve Barriers to Reverse Engineering

“…Metrics to define and evaluate barriers to reverse engineering have recently been developed [4,5]. The ability to quantify these barriers enables their implementation into topology optimization and other numerical optimization frameworks.…”

“…A barrier to reverse engineering has been defined as anything that impedes the extraction of information about a product from the product itself [4]. The metrics are summarized below in the equations for B, the barrier to reverse engineering, and T , the time to reverse engineer a product [5].…”

“…where P is the power (work per time to extract information), F is the rate of information extraction, K is the information content, and S is the information storage capacity. B and T are related but distinct as described in Harston and Mattson [5]. Often the goal in creating barriers to reverse engineering is to delay the competition until the market is saturated [6].…”

“…Although these metrics now allow a numerical quantification of K, in order to make this value a variable in a topology optimization routine it is necessary to automatically extract it. The information content (K) is the sum of the information content in several categories within a product [5]. By increasing the information content in any individual category the overall information content will be increased.…”

“…The information content in a product is the collection of information from different categories such as material, geometry, microstructure, electrical conductivity, color, and other types of information [5]. This thesis focuses only on increasing the information content (K) in the geometry and microstructure categories.…”