The impacts of cloud computing adoption at Higher Education institutions: a SWOT analysis

The integration of advanced technologies within education has frequently enhanced teaching. In higher education it is not a surprise that using the latest developments in cloud computing improves learning practices and thus ensures they are more interactive, available, and convenient. The ease of integration, collaboration, and sharing of information and knowledge made possibleby cloud computing will be further enhanced if this technical advancement is used wisely and in a foolproof manner. In this paper, a SWOT analysis of the impact of cloud computing on higher education methodologies is presented. A SWOT analysis is here demonstrated to be a helpful guide in decision-making for all higher education institutions when considering the migration of their present learning systems to cloud based systems

Cyber Supply Chain Risks in Cloud Computing - Bridging the Risk Assessment Gap

Cloud computing represents a significant paradigm shift in the delivery of information technology (IT) services. The rapid growth of the cloud and the increasing security concerns associated with the delivery of cloud services has led many researchers to study cloud risks and risk assessments. Some of these studies highlight the inability of current risk assessments to cope with the dynamic nature of the cloud, a gap we believe is as a result of the lack of consideration for the inherent risk of the supply chain. This paper, therefore, describes the cloud supply chain and investigates the effect of supply chain transparency in conducting a comprehensive risk assessment. We conducted an industry survey to gauge stakeholder awareness of supply chain risks, seeking to find out the risk assessment methods commonly used, factors that hindered a comprehensive evaluation and how the current state-of-the-art can be improved. The analysis of the survey dataset showed the lack of flexibility of the popular qualitative assessment methods in coping with the risks associated with the dynamic supply chain of cloud services, typically made up of an average of eight suppliers. To address these gaps, we propose a Cloud Supply Chain Cyber Risk Assessment (CSCCRA) model, a quantitative risk assessment model which is supported by decision support analysis and supply chain mapping in the identification, analysis and evaluation of cloud risks

Calm before the storm: the challenges of cloud computing in digital forensics

Cloud computing is a rapidly evolving information technology (IT) phenomenon. Rather than procure, deploy and manage a physical IT infrastructure to host their software applications, organizations are increasingly deploying their infrastructure into remote, virtualized environments, often hosted and managed by third parties. This development has significant implications for digital forensic investigators, equipment vendors, law enforcement, as well as corporate compliance and audit departments (among others). Much of digital forensic practice assumes careful control and management of IT assets (particularly data storage) during the conduct of an investigation. This paper summarises the key aspects of cloud computing and analyses how established digital forensic procedures will be invalidated in this new environment. Several new research challenges addressing this changing context are also identified and discussed

Twenty security considerations for cloud-supported Internet of Things

To realise the broad vision of pervasive computing, underpinned by the “Internet of Things” (IoT), it is essential to break down application and technology-based silos and support broad connectivity and data sharing; the cloud being a natural enabler. Work in IoT tends towards the subsystem, often focusing on particular technical concerns or application domains, before offloading data to the cloud. As such, there has been little regard given to the security, privacy and personal safety risks that arise beyond these subsystems; that is, from the wide-scale, crossplatform openness that cloud services bring to IoT. In this paper we focus on security considerations for IoT from the perspectives of cloud tenants, end-users and cloud providers, in the context of wide-scale IoT proliferation, working across the range of IoT technologies (be they things or entire IoT subsystems). Our contribution is to analyse the current state of cloud-supported IoT to make explicit the security considerations that require further work.This work was supported by UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant EP/K011510 CloudSafetyNet: End-to-End Application Security in the Cloud and Microsoft through the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre

Modular architecture providing convergent and ubiquitous intelligent connectivity for networks beyond 2030

The transition of the networks to support forthcoming beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G services introduces a number of important architectural challenges that force an evolution of existing operational frameworks. Current networks have introduced technical paradigms such as network virtualization, programmability and slicing, being a trend known as network softwarization. Forthcoming B5G and 6G services imposing stringent requirements will motivate a new radical change, augmenting those paradigms with the idea of smartness, pursuing an overall optimization on the usage of network and compute resources in a zero-trust environment. This paper presents a modular architecture under the concept of Convergent and UBiquitous Intelligent Connectivity (CUBIC), conceived to facilitate the aforementioned transition. CUBIC intends to investigate and innovate on the usage, combination and development of novel technologies to accompany the migration of existing networks towards Convergent and Ubiquitous Intelligent Connectivity (CUBIC) solutions, leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) mechanisms and Machine Learning (ML) tools in a totally secure environment

The future of factories: Different trends

The technological advancements promote the rise of the fourth industrial revolution, where key terms are efficiency, innovation, and enterprises’ digitalization. Market globalization, product mass customization, and more complex products need to reflect on changing the actual design methods and developing business processes and methodologies that have to be data-driven, AI-assisted, smart, and service-oriented. Therefore, there is a great interest in experimenting with emerging technologies and evaluating how they impact the actual business processes. This paper reports a comparison among the major trends in the digitalization of a Factory of the Future, in conjunction with the two major strategic programs of Industry 4.0 and China 2025. We have focused on these two programs because we have had experience with them in the context of the FIRST H2020 project. European industrialists identify the radical change in the traditional manufacturing production process as the rise of Industry 4.0. Conversely, China mainland launched its strategic plan in China 2025 to promote smart manufacturing to digitalize traditional manufacturing processes. The main contribution of this review paper is to report about a study, conducted and part of the aforementioned FIRST project, which aimed to investigate major trends in applying for both programs in terms of technologies and their applications for the factory’s digitalization. In particular, our analysis consists of the comparison between Digital Factory, Virtual Factory, Smart Manufacturing, and Cloud Manufacturing. We analyzed their essential characteristics, the operational boundaries, the employed technologies, and the interoperability offered at each factory level for each paradigm. Based on this analysis, we report the building blocks in terms of essential technologies required to develop the next generation of a factory of the future, as well as some of the interoperability challenges at a different scale, for enabling inter-factories communications between heterogeneous entities

Orchestration of distributed ingestion and processing of IoT data for fog platforms

In recent years there has been an extraordinary growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its protocols. The increasing diffusion of electronic devices with identification, computing and communication capabilities is laying ground for the emergence of a highly distributed service and networking environment. The above mentioned situation implies that there is an increasing demand for advanced IoT data management and processing platforms. Such platforms require support for multiple protocols at the edge for extended connectivity with the objects, but also need to exhibit uniform internal data organization and advanced data processing capabilities to fulfill the demands of the application and services that consume IoT data. One of the initial approaches to address this demand is the integration between IoT and the Cloud computing paradigm. There are many benefits of integrating IoT with Cloud computing. The IoT generates massive amounts of data, and Cloud computing provides a pathway for that data to travel to its destination. But today’s Cloud computing models do not quite fit for the volume, variety, and velocity of data that the IoT generates. Among the new technologies emerging around the Internet of Things to provide a new whole scenario, the Fog Computing paradigm has become the most relevant. Fog computing was introduced a few years ago in response to challenges posed by many IoT applications, including requirements such as very low latency, real-time operation, large geo-distribution, and mobility. Also this low latency, geo-distributed and mobility environments are covered by the network architecture MEC (Mobile Edge Computing) that provides an IT service environment and Cloud-computing capabilities at the edge of the mobile network, within the Radio Access Network (RAN) and in close proximity to mobile subscribers. Fog computing addresses use cases with requirements far beyond Cloud-only solution capabilities. The interplay between Cloud and Fog computing is crucial for the evolution of the so-called IoT, but the reach and specification of such interplay is an open problem. This thesis aims to find the right techniques and design decisions to build a scalable distributed system for the IoT under the Fog Computing paradigm to ingest and process data. The final goal is to explore the trade-offs and challenges in the design of a solution from Edge to Cloud to address opportunities that current and future technologies will bring in an integrated way. This thesis describes an architectural approach that addresses some of the technical challenges behind the convergence between IoT, Cloud and Fog with special focus on bridging the gap between Cloud and Fog. To that end, new models and techniques are introduced in order to explore solutions for IoT environments. This thesis contributes to the architectural proposals for IoT ingestion and data processing by 1) proposing the characterization of a platform for hosting IoT workloads in the Cloud providing multi-tenant data stream processing capabilities, the interfaces over an advanced data-centric technology, including the building of a state-of-the-art infrastructure to evaluate the performance and to validate the proposed solution. 2) studying an architectural approach following the Fog paradigm that addresses some of the technical challenges found in the first contribution. The idea is to study an extension of the model that addresses some of the central challenges behind the converge of Fog and IoT. 3) Design a distributed and scalable platform to perform IoT operations in a moving data environment. The idea after study data processing in Cloud, and after study the convenience of the Fog paradigm to solve the IoT close to the Edge challenges, is to define the protocols, the interfaces and the data management to solve the ingestion and processing of data in a distributed and orchestrated manner for the Fog Computing paradigm for IoT in a moving data environment.En els últims anys hi ha hagut un gran creixement del Internet of Things (IoT) i els seus protocols. La creixent difusió de dispositius electrònics amb capacitats d'identificació, computació i comunicació esta establint les bases de l’aparició de serveis altament distribuïts i del seu entorn de xarxa. L’esmentada situació implica que hi ha una creixent demanda de plataformes de processament i gestió avançada de dades per IoT. Aquestes plataformes requereixen suport per a múltiples protocols al Edge per connectivitat amb el objectes, però també necessiten d’una organització de dades interna i capacitats avançades de processament de dades per satisfer les demandes de les aplicacions i els serveis que consumeixen dades IoT. Una de les aproximacions inicials per abordar aquesta demanda és la integració entre IoT i el paradigma del Cloud computing. Hi ha molts avantatges d'integrar IoT amb el Cloud. IoT genera quantitats massives de dades i el Cloud proporciona una via perquè aquestes dades viatgin a la seva destinació. Però els models actuals del Cloud no s'ajusten del tot al volum, varietat i velocitat de les dades que genera l'IoT. Entre les noves tecnologies que sorgeixen al voltant del IoT per proporcionar un escenari nou, el paradigma del Fog Computing s'ha convertit en la més rellevant. Fog Computing es va introduir fa uns anys com a resposta als desafiaments que plantegen moltes aplicacions IoT, incloent requisits com baixa latència, operacions en temps real, distribució geogràfica extensa i mobilitat. També aquest entorn està cobert per l'arquitectura de xarxa MEC (Mobile Edge Computing) que proporciona serveis de TI i capacitats Cloud al edge per la xarxa mòbil dins la Radio Access Network (RAN) i a prop dels subscriptors mòbils. El Fog aborda casos d?us amb requisits que van més enllà de les capacitats de solucions només Cloud. La interacció entre Cloud i Fog és crucial per a l'evolució de l'anomenat IoT, però l'abast i especificació d'aquesta interacció és un problema obert. Aquesta tesi té com objectiu trobar les decisions de disseny i les tècniques adequades per construir un sistema distribuït escalable per IoT sota el paradigma del Fog Computing per a ingerir i processar dades. L'objectiu final és explorar els avantatges/desavantatges i els desafiaments en el disseny d'una solució des del Edge al Cloud per abordar les oportunitats que les tecnologies actuals i futures portaran d'una manera integrada. Aquesta tesi descriu un enfocament arquitectònic que aborda alguns dels reptes tècnics que hi ha darrere de la convergència entre IoT, Cloud i Fog amb especial atenció a reduir la bretxa entre el Cloud i el Fog. Amb aquesta finalitat, s'introdueixen nous models i tècniques per explorar solucions per entorns IoT. Aquesta tesi contribueix a les propostes arquitectòniques per a la ingesta i el processament de dades IoT mitjançant 1) proposant la caracterització d'una plataforma per a l'allotjament de workloads IoT en el Cloud que proporcioni capacitats de processament de flux de dades multi-tenant, les interfícies a través d'una tecnologia centrada en dades incloent la construcció d'una infraestructura avançada per avaluar el rendiment i validar la solució proposada. 2) estudiar un enfocament arquitectònic seguint el paradigma Fog que aborda alguns dels reptes tècnics que es troben en la primera contribució. La idea és estudiar una extensió del model que abordi alguns dels reptes centrals que hi ha darrere de la convergència de Fog i IoT. 3) Dissenyar una plataforma distribuïda i escalable per a realitzar operacions IoT en un entorn de dades en moviment. La idea després d'estudiar el processament de dades a Cloud, i després d'estudiar la conveniència del paradigma Fog per resoldre el IoT prop dels desafiaments Edge, és definir els protocols, les interfícies i la gestió de dades per resoldre la ingestió i processament de dades en un distribuït i orquestrat per al paradigma Fog Computing per a l'IoT en un entorn de dades en moviment