Recommendation of a security architecture for data loss prevention

Data and people are the most important assets of any organization. The amount of information that is generated increases exponentially due to the number of new devices that create information. On the other hand, more and more organizations are covered by some type of regulation, such as the General Data Protection Regulation. Organizations implement several security controls, however, they do not focus on protecting the information itself and information leakage is a reality and a growing concern. Based on this problem, there is a need to protect confidential information, such as clinical data, personal information, among others. In this regard, data loss prevention solutions (DLP – Data Loss Prevention) that have the ability to identify, monitor and act on data considered confidential, whether at the endpoint, data repositories or in the network, should be part of the information security strategy of organizations in order to mitigate these risks. This dissertation will study the topic of data loss prevention and evaluate several existing solutions in order to identify the key components of this type of solutions. The contribution of this work will be the recommendation of a security architecture that mitigates the risk of information leakage and that can be easily adaptable to any DLP solution to be implemented by organizations. In order to prove the efficiency of the architecture, it was implemented and tested to mitigate the risk of information leakage in specific proposed scenarios.A informação e as pessoas são os ativos mais importantes de qualquer organização. A quantidade de informação que é gerada aumenta exponencialmente devido à quantidade de novos dispositivos que produzem informação. Por outro lado, cada vez mais organizações são abrangidas por algum tipo de regulamento, como o Regulamento Geral de Proteção de Dados. As organizações implementam vários controlos de segurança, no entanto, não se focam na proteção da informação em si e a fuga da informação é uma realidade e uma preocupação crescente. Com base neste problema, existe a necessidade de proteger a informação confidencial, como dados clínicos, informação pessoal, entre outros. Neste sentido, as soluções de prevenção da fuga de informação (DLP – Data Loss Prevention) que têm a capacidade de identificar, monitorizar e atuar em dados considerados confidenciais, seja ao nível do endpoint, repositório de dados ou na rede, devem fazer parte da estratégia da segurança da informação das organizações por forma a mitigar estes riscos. Esta dissertação vai analisar a temática da prevenção da fuga de informação e avaliar várias soluções existentes com o propósito de identificar as componentes chave deste tipo de soluções. A principal contribuição deste trabalho será a recomendação de uma arquitetura de segurança que mitigue o risco da fuga da informação e que poderá ser facilmente adaptável a qualquer solução de DLP a ser implementada pelas organizações. Por forma a comprovar a eficiência da arquitetura, a mesma foi implementada e testada para mitigar o risco de fuga da informação em cenários específicos que foram definidos

Metal-to-Metal Sealing for High Pressure Subsea Production System(SPS) Bolted Flange Connector

Metal to metal seal is one type of static seal used in high pressure Subsea Production System (SPS) Bolted Flange connector. Static sealing elements, as their classification implies, remain stationary relative to the surfaces they are sealing against. The subsea system can be located many miles away in deeper water and tied back to existing host facilities in shallow water. Due to the deeper water, higher challenges and problems need to be considered such as high reservoir pressures, low sea-bed temperatures, large variations in water depth range, flow assurance challenges, geo-hazard issue like gas hydrates, rough metocean condition, remoteness and hydrostatic pressure. The first objective is to analyze how leakages occur in SPS Bolted Flange connector. Bolt, flange and seal are the three main components in Bolted Flange connector that can contribute to the excessive leakage. Once excessive leakage happens in the deepwater, there will be loss in productivity, marine pollution and other important effects that need to be highly considered. From the literature reviews, main factors due to the seal that can cause leakage are inadequate overall flatness, inadequate smoothness and seal ring breakage can be concluded. The second objective is to propose and demonstrate the applicability of metal to metal sealing of SPS Bolted Flange connector for deepwater application. Temperature, pressure, industry design codes, life expectancy, leakage integrity and maintenance and accessibility are the key elements in selection of metal seal for SPS Bolted Flange connector. For this project, metal O-Ring has been chosen as the design for metal seal inside SPS Bolted Flange connector because its characteristics meet the deepwater and subsea requirements. The comparison has been made between Stainless Steel AISI 321, Alloy 600 and Alloy X750 by calculating the pressure exerted on the metal seal. All these materials satisfy subsea requirement but Stainless Steel AISI 321 has been chosen for metal ORing inside Bolted Flange connector due to cost consideration

NLP Methods in Host-based Intrusion Detection Systems: A Systematic Review and Future Directions

Host based Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) is an effective last line of defense for defending against cyber security attacks after perimeter defenses (e.g., Network based Intrusion Detection System and Firewall) have failed or been bypassed. HIDS is widely adopted in the industry as HIDS is ranked among the top two most used security tools by Security Operation Centers (SOC) of organizations. Although effective and efficient HIDS is highly desirable for industrial organizations, the evolution of increasingly complex attack patterns causes several challenges resulting in performance degradation of HIDS (e.g., high false alert rate creating alert fatigue for SOC staff). Since Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods are better suited for identifying complex attack patterns, an increasing number of HIDS are leveraging the advances in NLP that have shown effective and efficient performance in precisely detecting low footprint, zero day attacks and predicting the next steps of attackers. This active research trend of using NLP in HIDS demands a synthesized and comprehensive body of knowledge of NLP based HIDS. Thus, we conducted a systematic review of the literature on the end to end pipeline of the use of NLP in HIDS development. For the end to end NLP based HIDS development pipeline, we identify, taxonomically categorize and systematically compare the state of the art of NLP methods usage in HIDS, attacks detected by these NLP methods, datasets and evaluation metrics which are used to evaluate the NLP based HIDS. We highlight the relevant prevalent practices, considerations, advantages and limitations to support the HIDS developers. We also outline the future research directions for the NLP based HIDS development

AI Solutions for MDS: Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Misuse Detection and Localisation in Telecommunication Environments

This report considers the application of Articial Intelligence (AI) techniques to the problem of misuse detection and misuse localisation within telecommunications environments. A broad survey of techniques is provided, that covers inter alia rule based systems, model-based systems, case based reasoning, pattern matching, clustering and feature extraction, articial neural networks, genetic algorithms, arti cial immune systems, agent based systems, data mining and a variety of hybrid approaches. The report then considers the central issue of event correlation, that is at the heart of many misuse detection and localisation systems. The notion of being able to infer misuse by the correlation of individual temporally distributed events within a multiple data stream environment is explored, and a range of techniques, covering model based approaches, `programmed' AI and machine learning paradigms. It is found that, in general, correlation is best achieved via rule based approaches, but that these suffer from a number of drawbacks, such as the difculty of developing and maintaining an appropriate knowledge base, and the lack of ability to generalise from known misuses to new unseen misuses. Two distinct approaches are evident. One attempts to encode knowledge of known misuses, typically within rules, and use this to screen events. This approach cannot generally detect misuses for which it has not been programmed, i.e. it is prone to issuing false negatives. The other attempts to `learn' the features of event patterns that constitute normal behaviour, and, by observing patterns that do not match expected behaviour, detect when a misuse has occurred. This approach is prone to issuing false positives, i.e. inferring misuse from innocent patterns of behaviour that the system was not trained to recognise. Contemporary approaches are seen to favour hybridisation, often combining detection or localisation mechanisms for both abnormal and normal behaviour, the former to capture known cases of misuse, the latter to capture unknown cases. In some systems, these mechanisms even work together to update each other to increase detection rates and lower false positive rates. It is concluded that hybridisation offers the most promising future direction, but that a rule or state based component is likely to remain, being the most natural approach to the correlation of complex events. The challenge, then, is to mitigate the weaknesses of canonical programmed systems such that learning, generalisation and adaptation are more readily facilitated

Surgical Antimicrobial Prophylaxis in Abdominal Surgery for Neonates and Paediatrics: A RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method Consensus Study

Surgical site infections (SSIs), i.e., surgery-related infections that occur within 30 days after surgery without an implant and within one year if an implant is placed, complicate surgical procedures in up to 10% of cases, but an underestimation of the data is possible since about 50% of SSIs occur after the hospital discharge. Gastrointestinal surgical procedures are among the surgical procedures with the highest risk of SSIs, especially when colon surgery is considered. Data that were collected from children seem to indicate that the risk of SSIs can be higher than in adults. This consensus document describes the use of preoperative antibiotic prophylaxis in neonates and children that are undergoing abdominal surgery and has the purpose of providing guidance to healthcare professionals who take care of children to avoid unnecessary and dangerous use of antibiotics in these patients. The following surgical procedures were analyzed: (1) gastrointestinal endoscopy; (2) abdominal surgery with a laparoscopic or laparotomy approach; (3) small bowel surgery; (4) appendectomy; (5) abdominal wall defect correction interventions; (6) ileo-colic perforation; (7) colorectal procedures; (8) biliary tract procedures; and (9) surgery on the liver or pancreas. Thanks to the multidisciplinary contribution of experts belonging to the most important Italian scientific societies that take care of neonates and children, this document presents an invaluable reference tool for perioperative antibiotic prophylaxis in the paediatric and neonatal populations

Renal failure in experimental sepsis: role of Endothelin and the Toll-like receptor 4

Sepsis is the leading cause of renal failure in critically ill patients, but the pathogenesis of septic kidney dysfunction is poorly defined. The current paradigm states that hypoperfusion and excessive renal vasoconstriction results in renal ischemia. However, experimental data also exist indicating a direct immune-mediated basis of septic renal impairment. This thesis aimed to investigate the contribution of both a potent vasoconstrictor peptide, endothelin-1 (ET-1), and a receptor that activates the immune system in response to a bacterial infection, the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), to the renal failure caused by sepsis. The first part of this thesis investigated the role of the endothelin system in renal microcirculatory and functional impairment caused by experimental septic renal failure, by studying the effects of dual endothelin type A and B (ETA/ETB) antagonism and selective ETA-antagonism during porcine endotoxemia. ET-1 is a vasoconstrictor peptide that is a potent modulator of microcirculatory blood flow. It is released in high amounts during sepsis and experimental data have shown that ET-1 reduces renal blood flow. In paper I and II pigs were subjected to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) infusion and the renal microcirculatory effects of dual ETA/ETB or selective ETA antagonism were investigated. The main findings were that dual ETA/ETB blockade attenuated the endotoxemia induced reduction in renal cortical microcirculation, as well as the increase in plasma creatinine levels (paper I). In addition, selective ETA antagonism reduced the decline in renal medullary microcirculation, but had no significant effect on diuresis or creatinine clearance (paper II). The second part of this thesis investigated the role of TLR4 activation in renal failure caused by hyperdynamic endotoxemia or sepsis. Conscious surgically prepared sheep were subjected to LPS or live Escherichia coli infusion and observed for 24-36 hours. A main finding was that pretreatment with a TLR4-inhibitor attenuated renal failure and hypotension caused by endotoxemia in sheep. This effect was greater compared to norepinephrine treatment, in a dose that prevented hypotension (paper III). Moreover, it was observed that septic renal failure developed without renal hypoperfusion and that treatment with a TLR4-inhibitor reversed renal failure when administered 12 hours into sepsis (paper IV). This effect was independent of changes in systemic or renal hemodynamics but was associated with a reduced renal neutrophil accumulation. In conclusion, despite no reduction in renal perfusion or arterial blood pressure, septic renal failure may still develop. During hyperdynamic sepsis, stimulation of the innate immune system, via TLR4 activation, may contribute to the development of renal failure. In addition, TLR4-inhibition is an effective treatment to improve renal function in ovine sepsis induced by E.coli. In hypodynamic endotoxemia, ET-1 contributes to renal vasoconstriction. By acting on ETA, ET-1 reduces renal medullary blood flow causing ischemia but has no short-term effect on renal function

A toolbox for Artificial Intelligence Algorithms in Cyber Attacks Prevention and Detection

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementThis Thesis provides a qualitative view on the usage of AI technology in cybersecurity strategy of businesses. It explores the field of AI technology today, and how it is a good technology to implement into Cyber Security. The Internet and Informational technology have transformed the world of today. There is no doubt that it has created huge opportunities for global economy and humanity. The fact that Businesses of today is thoroughly dependent on the Internet and Information Systems has also exposed new vulnerabilities in terms of cybercrimes performed by a diversity of hackers, criminals, terrorists, the state and the non-state actors. All Public, private companies and government agencies are vulnerable for cybercrimes, none is left fully protected. In the recent years AI and machine learning technology have become essential to information security, since these technologies can analyze swiftly millions of datasets and tracking down a wide range of cyber threats. Alongside With the increasingly growth of automation in businesses, is it realistic that cybersecurity can be removed from human interaction into fully independent AI Applications to cover the businesses Information System Architecture of businesses in the future? This is a very interesting field those resources really need to deep into to be able to fully take advantage of the fully potential of AI technology in the usage in the field of cybersecurity. This thesis will explore the usage of AI algorithms in the prevention and detection of cyberattack in businesses and how to optimize its use. This knowledge will be used to implement a framework and a corresponding hybrid toolbox application that its purpose is be to be useful in every business in terms of strengthening the cybersecurity environment

CLINICAL OUTCOMES ASSOCIATED WITH TIME TO ANTIMICROBIAL THERAPY CHANGE FROM VANCOMYCIN TO DAPTOMYCIN IN STAPHYLOCOCCAL BACTEREMIA

Background: Staphylococcus aureus is an aerobic, Gram positive commensal organism that is capable of causing a wide spectrum of disease. This study contributes to previously published literature regarding daptomycin versus vancomycin use in S. aureus bacteremia (SAB). Methods: Adult patients admitted between 2010 and 2014, billed for ICD-9 code V09.0, 038.11, 038.12, 041.11, or 041.12, and received vancomycin and daptomycin were included in this retrospective analysis. Patients were stratified by time to change in antibiotics from vancomycin to daptomycin to the early switch (1-3 days), intermediate switch (4-7 days), or late switch (8 days or later) group. The primary outcome was treatment failure defined as 30-day recurrence, 60-day all-cause mortality, and 90-day all-cause readmission. Results: 193 patients were enrolled in the final cohort. The overall treatment failure rate was 18% with no differences between early switch, intermediate switch, and late switch (P=0.72) groups. Independent predictors of treatment success were length of stay (OR=1.035) and time to positive culture (OR=0.961). Conclusions: Results of this study did not demonstrate a difference in treatment failure based on time to switch from vancomycin to daptomycin. Future research should focus on optimizing use of vancomycin and daptomycin and medical management of SAB

Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS) conceptual design option study

Results are given of a study to explore options for the development of a Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) for a future Space Station. In addition, study results will benefit the design of other facilities such as the Life Sciences Research Facility, a ground-based CELSS demonstrator, and will be useful in planning longer range missions such as a lunar base or manned Mars mission. The objectives were to develop weight and cost estimates for one CELSS module selected from a set of preliminary plant growth unit (PGU) design options. Eleven Space Station CELSS module conceptual PGU designs were reviewed, components and subsystems identified and a sensitivity analysis performed. Areas where insufficient data is available were identified and divided into the categories of biological research, engineering research, and technology development. Topics which receive significant attention are lighting systems for the PGU, the use of automation within the CELSS system, and electric power requirements. Other areas examined include plant harvesting and processing, crop mix analysis, air circulation and atmosphere contaminant flow subsystems, thermal control considerations, utility routing including accessibility and maintenance, and nutrient subsystem design