Identifying and mitigating security risks for secure and robust NGI networks

Smart city development is important to achieve sustainable cities and societies which help enhance urban services, reduce resource consumption and decrease overall cost. The incorporation of smart cities with the Internet has given us the Next Generation of Internet (NGI) where every smart device exploits the interconnected services and infrastructure of the Internet. The underlying structure of NGI is composed of large scale heterogeneous multilevel systems-of-systems (SoSs) where each system represents a sensor, mobile phone, computer or smart device. Security and privacy is a fundamental requirement of NGI which is heavily dependent on the composition of services and connectivity of the underlying systems. Meaning any unsecure system can affect the security of the entire networked infrastructure/SoSs. Therefore, it is important to analyse and understand the composition of different systems at different levels in NGI in order to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities. This paper proposes a solution to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities within multilevel SoSs, to enhance security without deploying additional security at endpoints, and quantify security levels of individual systems and the entire composed system. The solution was tested and evaluated using simulation and a network testbed. Results show that NGI security can be enhanced with better composition of systems. © 2020 Elsevier Lt

Identifying and Mitigating Security Risks in Multi-Level Systems-of-Systems Environments

In recent years, organisations, governments, and cities have taken advantage of the many benefits and automated processes Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offers, evolving their existing systems and infrastructures into highly connected and complex Systems-of-Systems (SoS). These infrastructures endeavour to increase robustness and offer some resilience against single points of failure. The Internet, Wireless Sensor Networks, the Internet of Things, critical infrastructures, the human body, etc., can all be broadly categorised as SoS, as they encompass a wide range of differing systems that collaborate to fulfil objectives that the distinct systems could not fulfil on their own. ICT constructed SoS face the same dangers, limitations, and challenges as those of traditional cyber based networks, and while monitoring the security of small networks can be difficult, the dynamic nature, size, and complexity of SoS makes securing these infrastructures more taxing. Solutions that attempt to identify risks, vulnerabilities, and model the topologies of SoS have failed to evolve at the same pace as SoS adoption. This has resulted in attacks against these infrastructures gaining prevalence, as unidentified vulnerabilities and exploits provide unguarded opportunities for attackers to exploit. In addition, the new collaborative relations introduce new cyber interdependencies, unforeseen cascading failures, and increase complexity. This thesis presents an innovative approach to identifying, mitigating risks, and securing SoS environments. Our security framework incorporates a number of novel techniques, which allows us to calculate the security level of the entire SoS infrastructure using vulnerability analysis, node property aspects, topology data, and other factors, and to improve and mitigate risks without adding additional resources into the SoS infrastructure. Other risk factors we examine include risks associated with different properties, and the likelihood of violating access control requirements. Extending the principals of the framework, we also apply the approach to multi-level SoS, in order to improve both SoS security and the overall robustness of the network. In addition, the identified risks, vulnerabilities, and interdependent links are modelled by extending network modelling and attack graph generation methods. The proposed SeCurity Risk Analysis and Mitigation Framework and principal techniques have been researched, developed, implemented, and then evaluated via numerous experiments and case studies. The subsequent results accomplished ascertain that the framework can successfully observe SoS and produce an accurate security level for the entire SoS in all instances, visualising identified vulnerabilities, interdependencies, high risk nodes, data access violations, and security grades in a series of reports and undirected graphs. The framework’s evolutionary approach to mitigating risks and the robustness function which can determine the appropriateness of the SoS, revealed promising results, with the framework and principal techniques identifying SoS topologies, and quantifying their associated security levels. Distinguishing SoS that are either optimally structured (in terms of communication security), or cannot be evolved as the applied processes would negatively impede the security and robustness of the SoS. Likewise, the framework is capable via evolvement methods of identifying SoS communication configurations that improve communication security and assure data as it traverses across an unsecure and unencrypted SoS. Reporting enhanced SoS configurations that mitigate risks in a series of undirected graphs and reports that visualise and detail the SoS topology and its vulnerabilities. These reported candidates and optimal solutions improve the security and SoS robustness, and will support the maintenance of acceptable and tolerable low centrality factors, should these recommended configurations be applied to the evaluated SoS infrastructure

Políticas de Copyright de Publicações Científicas em Repositórios Institucionais: O Caso do INESC TEC

A progressiva transformação das práticas científicas, impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento das novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), têm possibilitado aumentar o acesso à informação, caminhando gradualmente para uma abertura do ciclo de pesquisa. Isto permitirá resolver a longo prazo uma adversidade que se tem colocado aos investigadores, que passa pela existência de barreiras que limitam as condições de acesso, sejam estas geográficas ou financeiras. Apesar da produção científica ser dominada, maioritariamente, por grandes editoras comerciais, estando sujeita às regras por estas impostas, o Movimento do Acesso Aberto cuja primeira declaração pública, a Declaração de Budapeste (BOAI), é de 2002, vem propor alterações significativas que beneficiam os autores e os leitores. Este Movimento vem a ganhar importância em Portugal desde 2003, com a constituição do primeiro repositório institucional a nível nacional. Os repositórios institucionais surgiram como uma ferramenta de divulgação da produção científica de uma instituição, com o intuito de permitir abrir aos resultados da investigação, quer antes da publicação e do próprio processo de arbitragem (preprint), quer depois (postprint), e, consequentemente, aumentar a visibilidade do trabalho desenvolvido por um investigador e a respetiva instituição. O estudo apresentado, que passou por uma análise das políticas de copyright das publicações científicas mais relevantes do INESC TEC, permitiu não só perceber que as editoras adotam cada vez mais políticas que possibilitam o auto-arquivo das publicações em repositórios institucionais, como também que existe todo um trabalho de sensibilização a percorrer, não só para os investigadores, como para a instituição e toda a sociedade. A produção de um conjunto de recomendações, que passam pela implementação de uma política institucional que incentive o auto-arquivo das publicações desenvolvidas no âmbito institucional no repositório, serve como mote para uma maior valorização da produção científica do INESC TEC.The progressive transformation of scientific practices, driven by the development of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which made it possible to increase access to information, gradually moving towards an opening of the research cycle. This opening makes it possible to resolve, in the long term, the adversity that has been placed on researchers, which involves the existence of barriers that limit access conditions, whether geographical or financial. Although large commercial publishers predominantly dominate scientific production and subject it to the rules imposed by them, the Open Access movement whose first public declaration, the Budapest Declaration (BOAI), was in 2002, proposes significant changes that benefit the authors and the readers. This Movement has gained importance in Portugal since 2003, with the constitution of the first institutional repository at the national level. Institutional repositories have emerged as a tool for disseminating the scientific production of an institution to open the results of the research, both before publication and the preprint process and postprint, increase the visibility of work done by an investigator and his or her institution. The present study, which underwent an analysis of the copyright policies of INESC TEC most relevant scientific publications, allowed not only to realize that publishers are increasingly adopting policies that make it possible to self-archive publications in institutional repositories, all the work of raising awareness, not only for researchers but also for the institution and the whole society. The production of a set of recommendations, which go through the implementation of an institutional policy that encourages the self-archiving of the publications developed in the institutional scope in the repository, serves as a motto for a greater appreciation of the scientific production of INESC TEC