Trust Establishment Mechanisms for Distributed Service Environments

The aim and motivation of this dissertation can be best described in one of the most important application fields, the cloud computing. It has changed entire business model of service-oriented computing environments in the last decade. Cloud computing enables information technology related services in a more dynamic and scalable way than before – more cost-effective than before due to the economy of scale and of sharing resources. These opportunities are too attractive for consumers to ignore in today’s highly competitive service environments. The way to realise these opportunities, however, is not free of obstacles. Services offered in cloud computing environments are often composed of multiple service components, which are hosted in distributed systems across the globe and managed by multiple parties. Potential consumers often feel that they lose the control over their data, due to the lack of transparent service specification and unclear security assurances in such environments. These issues encountered by the consumers boiled down to an unwillingness to depend on the service providers regarding the services they offer in the marketplaces. Therefore, consumers have to be put in a position where they can reliably assess the dependability of a service provider. At the same time, service providers have to be able to truthfully present the service-specific security capabilities. If both of these objectives can be achieved, consumers have a basis to make well-founded decisions about whether or not to depend on a particular service provider out of many alternatives. In this thesis, computational trust mechanisms are leveraged to assess the capabilities and evaluate the dependability of service providers. These mechanisms, in the end, potentially support consumers to establish trust on service providers in distributed service environments, e.g., cloud computing. In such environments, acceptable quality of the services can be maintained if the providers possess required capabilities regarding different service-specific attributes, e.g., security, performance, compliance. As services in these environments are often composed of multiple services, subsystems and components, evaluating trustworthiness of the service providers based on the service-specific attributes is non-trivial. In this vein, novel mechanisms are proposed for assessing and evaluating the trustworthiness of service providers considering the trustworthiness of composite services. The scientific contributions towards those novel mechanisms are summarised as follows: • Firstly, we introduce a list of service-specific attributes, QoS+ [HRM10, HHRM12], based on a systematic and comprehensive analysis of existing literatures in the field of cloud computing security and trust. • Secondly, a formal framework [SVRH11, RHMV11a, RHMV11b] is proposed to analyse the composite services along with their required service-specific attributes considering consumer requirements and represent them in simplified meaningful terms, i.e., Propositional Logic Terms (PLTs). • Thirdly, a novel trust evaluation framework CertainLogic [RHMV11a, RHMV11b, HRHM12a, HRHM12b] is proposed to evaluate the PLTs, i.e., capabilities of service providers. The framework provides computational operators to evaluate the PLTs, considering that uncertain and conflicting information are associated with each of the PLTs and those information can be derived from multiple sources. • Finally, harnessing these technical building blocks we present a novel trust management architecture [HRM11] for cloud computing marketplaces. The architecture is designed to support consumers in assessing and evaluating the trustworthiness of service providers based on the published information about their services. The novel contributions of this thesis are evaluated using proof-of-concept-system, prototype implementations and formal proofs. The proof-of-concept-system [HRMV13, HVM13a, HVM13b] is a realisation of the proposed architecture for trust management in cloud marketplaces. The realisation of the system is implemented based on a self-assessment framework, proposed by the Cloud Security Alliance, where the formal framework and computational operators of CertainLogic are applied. The realisation of the system enables consumers to evaluate the trustworthiness of service providers based on their published datasets in the CSA STAR. A number of experiments are conducted in different cloud computing scenarios leveraging the datasets in order to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the contributions made in this thesis. Additionally, the prototype implementations of CertainLogic framework provide means to demonstrate the characteristics of the computational operators by means of various examples. The formal framework as well as computational operators of CertainLogic are validated against desirable mathematical properties, which are supported by formal algebraic proofs

Trust-as-a-Service: A reputation-enabled trust framework for 5G network resource provisioning

Trust, security, and privacy are three of the major pillars to assemble the fifth-generation network and beyond. Despite such pillars are principally interconnected, a multitude of challenges arise that need to be addressed separately. 5G networks ought to offer flexible and pervasive computing capabilities across multiple domains according to user demands and assure trustworthy network providers. To this end, distributed marketplaces expect to boost the trading of heterogeneous resources so as to enable the establishment of pervasive service chains between cross-domains. Yet, the need for selecting reliable parties as “marketplace operators” plays a pivotal role in achieving a trustworthy ecosystem. Two of the principal blockages in managing foreseeable networks are the need to consider trust as a property in the resource provisioning process and adapt previous trust models to accomplish the new network and business requirements. In this regard, this article is centered on the trust management of 5G multi-party network resource provisioning. As a result, a reputation-based trust framework is proposed as a Trust-as-a-Service (TaaS) solution for a distributed multi-stakeholder environment where requirements such as zero trust and zero-touch principles should be met. Besides, a literature review is also conducted to recognize the network and business requirements currently envisaged. Finally, the validation of the proposed trust framework was performed in a real research environment, the 5GBarcelona testbed, leveraging 12% of a 2.1 GHz CPU with 20 cores and 2% of the 30 GiB memory. These outcomes reveal the TaaS solution’s feasibility and conservative approach in the context of determining reliable network operators

A comparison framework and review of service brokerage solutions for cloud architectures

Cloud service brokerage has been identified as a key concern for future cloud technology development and research. We compare service brokerage solutions. A range of specific concerns like architecture, programming and quality will be looked at. We apply a 2-pronged classification and comparison framework.We will identify challenges and wider research objectives based on an identification of cloud broker architecture concerns and technical requirements for service brokerage solutions. We will discuss complex cloud architecture concerns such as commoditisation and federation of integrated, vertical cloud stacks

Comparative Analysis of Data Security and Cloud Storage Models Using NSL KDD Dataset

Cloud computing is becoming increasingly important in many enterprises, and researchers are focusing on safeguarding cloud computing. Due to the extensive variety of service options it offers, A significant amount of interest from the scientific community has been focused on cloud computing. The two biggest problems with cloud computing are security and privacy. The key challenge is maintaining privacy, which expands rapidly with the number of users. A perfect security system must efficiently ensure each security aspect. This study provides a literature review illustrating the security in the cloud with respect to privacy, integrity, confidentiality and availability, and it also provides a comparison table illustrating the differences between various security and storage models with respect to the approaches and components of the models offered. This study also compares Naïve Bayes and SVM on the accuracy, recall and precision metrics using the NSL KDD dataset

Trust me, I’m an Intermediary! Exploring Data Intermediation Services

Data ecosystems receive considerable attention in academia and practice, as indicated by a steadily growing body of research and large-scale (industry-driven) research projects. They can leverage so-called data intermediaries, which are mediating parties that facilitate data sharing between a data provider and a data consumer. Research has uncovered many types of data intermediaries, such as data marketplaces or data trusts. However, what is missing is a ‘big picture’ of data intermediaries and the functions they fulfill. We tackle this issue by extracting data intermediation services decoupled from specific instances to give a comprehensive overview of how they work. To achieve this, we report on a systematic literature review, contributing data intermediation services

Mapping the Path to a Health Data Marketplace in Norway: An Exploratory Case Study

This Master's thesis explores the complex dynamics of health data in the digital age, focusing on its secure and efficient management and ethical considerations. It investigates the potential of implementing a Health Data Marketplace (HDM) in the Norwegian e-health sector, aiming to construct a seamless health data exchange platform. This study proposes the integration of an existing health data gateway, the Egde Health Gateway (EHG), with the HDM. The research offers an in-depth analysis of existing limitations in health data exchange systems in Norway. It addresses current research gaps in Data Marketplace, Business Models, Gateways, and the Norwegian e-health context. Guided by two central research questions, this thesis delves into identifying essential components required to successfully implement an HDM in Norway and how this marketplace could be established using an existing data platform. Significantly, the thesis underscores the pivotal role of primary stakeholders in the HDM - Platform Operators, Platform Users, and Legal Authorities. The exploration reveals that Platform Operators are vital influencers, fostering collaboration and innovation within the ecosystem, while Platform Users and Legal Authorities ensure the marketplace's innovative and compliance aspects. Additionally, this study identifies essential components for successfully integrating an HDM into an existing health data platform, including Data Standardization, Interoperability, Integration, Security, Trust, and Legal Frameworks, among others. The thesis marks a significant step towards realizing an HDM in the Norwegian e-health sector. It invites future research to broaden stakeholder perspectives, examine economic aspects of the HDM, and delve into ethical considerations and technological innovations. The findings from this exploration serve as a catalyst for leveraging health data effectively, securely, and ethically, contributing to improved healthcare outcomes, research, and innovation in Norway and beyond

Measuring the Business Value of Cloud Computing

The importance of demonstrating the value achieved from IT investments is long established in the Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS) literature. However, emerging technologies such as the ever-changing complex area of cloud computing present new challenges and opportunities for demonstrating how IT investments lead to business value. Recent reviews of extant literature highlights the need for multi-disciplinary research. This research should explore and further develops the conceptualization of value in cloud computing research. In addition, there is a need for research which investigates how IT value manifests itself across the chain of service provision and in inter-organizational scenarios. This open access book will review the state of the art from an IS, Computer Science and Accounting perspective, will introduce and discuss the main techniques for measuring business value for cloud computing in a variety of scenarios, and illustrate these with mini-case studies

Mapping the Path to a Health Data Marketplace in Norway: An Exploratory Case Study

This Master's thesis explores the complex dynamics of health data in the digital age, focusing on its secure and efficient management and ethical considerations. It investigates the potential of implementing a Health Data Marketplace (HDM) in the Norwegian e-health sector, aiming to construct a seamless health data exchange platform. This study proposes the integration of an existing health data gateway, the Egde Health Gateway (EHG), with the HDM. The research offers an in-depth analysis of existing limitations in health data exchange systems in Norway. It addresses current research gaps in Data Marketplace, Business Models, Gateways, and the Norwegian e-health context. Guided by two central research questions, this thesis delves into identifying essential components required to successfully implement an HDM in Norway and how this marketplace could be established using an existing data platform. Significantly, the thesis underscores the pivotal role of primary stakeholders in the HDM - Platform Operators, Platform Users, and Legal Authorities. The exploration reveals that Platform Operators are vital influencers, fostering collaboration and innovation within the ecosystem, while Platform Users and Legal Authorities ensure the marketplace's innovative and compliance aspects. Additionally, this study identifies essential components for successfully integrating an HDM into an existing health data platform, including Data Standardization, Interoperability, Integration, Security, Trust, and Legal Frameworks, among others. The thesis marks a significant step towards realizing an HDM in the Norwegian e-health sector. It invites future research to broaden stakeholder perspectives, examine economic aspects of the HDM, and delve into ethical considerations and technological innovations. The findings from this exploration serve as a catalyst for leveraging health data effectively, securely, and ethically, contributing to improved healthcare outcomes, research, and innovation in Norway and beyon