Spectrum sharing security and attacks in CRNs: a review

Cognitive Radio plays a major part in communication technology by resolving the shortage of the spectrum through usage of dynamic spectrum access and artificial intelligence characteristics. The element of spectrum sharing in cognitive radio is a fundament al approach in utilising free channels. Cooperatively communicating cognitive radio devices use the common control channel of the cognitive radio medium access control to achieve spectrum sharing. Thus, the common control channel and consequently spectrum sharing security are vital to ensuring security in the subsequent data communication among cognitive radio nodes. In addition to well known security problems in wireless networks, cognitive radio networks introduce new classes of security threats and challenges, such as licensed user emulation attacks in spectrum sensing and misbehaviours in the common control channel transactions, which degrade the overall network operation and performance. This review paper briefly presents the known threats and attacks in wireless networks before it looks into the concept of cognitive radio and its main functionality. The paper then mainly focuses on spectrum sharing security and its related challenges. Since spectrum sharing is enabled through usage of the common control channel, more attention is paid to the security of the common control channel by looking into its security threats as well as protection and detection mechanisms. Finally, the pros and cons as well as the comparisons of different CR - specific security mechanisms are presented with some open research issues and challenges

The RFID PIA – developed by industry, agreed by regulators

This chapter discusses the privacy impact assessment (PIA) framework endorsed by the European Commission on February 11th, 2011. This PIA, the first to receive the Commission's endorsement, was developed to deal with privacy challenges associated with the deployment of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, a key building block of the Internet of Things. The goal of this chapter is to present the methodology and key constructs of the RFID PIA Framework in more detail than was possible in the official text. RFID operators can use this article as a support document when they conduct PIAs and need to interpret the PIA Framework. The chapter begins with a history of why and how the PIA Framework for RFID came about. It then proceeds with a description of the endorsed PIA process for RFID applications and explains in detail how this process is supposed to function. It provides examples discussed during the development of the PIA Framework. These examples reflect the rationale behind and evolution of the text's methods and definitions. The chapter also provides insight into the stakeholder debates and compromises that have important implications for PIAs in general.Series: Working Papers on Information Systems, Information Business and Operation

A Review of Blockchain Technology Based Techniques to Preserve Privacy and to Secure for Electronic Health Records

Research has been done to broaden the block chain’s use cases outside of finance since Bitcoin introduced it. One sector where block chain is anticipated to have a big influence is healthcare. Researchers and practitioners in health informatics constantly struggle to keep up with the advancement of this field's new but quickly expanding body of research. This paper provides a thorough analysis of recent studies looking into the application of block chain based technology within the healthcare sector. Electronic health records (EHRs) are becoming a crucial tool for health care practitioners in achieving these objectives and providing high-quality treatment. Technology and regulatory barriers, such as concerns about results and privacy issues, make it difficult to use these technologies. Despite the fact that a variety of efforts have been introduced to focus on the specific privacy and security needs of future applications with functional parameters, there is still a need for research into the application, security and privacy complexities, and requirements of block chain based healthcare applications, as well as possible security threats and countermeasures. The primary objective of this article is to determine how to safeguard electronic health records (EHRs) using block chain technology in healthcare applications. It discusses contemporary HyperLedgerfabrics techniques, Interplanar file storage systems with block chain capabilities, privacy preservation techniques for EHRs, and recommender systems

Towards Sustainable Collaborative Logistics Using Specialist Planning Algorithms and a Gain-Sharing Business Model:A UK Case Study

This paper introduces the FreightShare Lab Platform (FSLP) and its embedded business model, aiming to facilitate and encourage horizontal collaboration in freight logistics. The idea of the FSLP is to create collaborating clusters of freight operators, and corresponding collaborative operational plans, via specialised decision support algorithms and multi-fleet optimisation. Further, a gain-sharing business model embedded within the FSLP algorithms ensures that participants, mainly logistics service providers and freight operators, can retain their own profit margins and fairly share the efficiency gains from collaboration. A case study is presented, centred on a large UK freight operator, to evaluate the key FSLP algorithms in a realistic context. The results evidence the potential for significant financial and environmental benefits for industry and society

Secure FaaS orchestration in the fog: how far are we?

AbstractFunction-as-a-Service (FaaS) allows developers to define, orchestrate and run modular event-based pieces of code on virtualised resources, without the burden of managing the underlying infrastructure nor the life-cycle of such pieces of code. Indeed, FaaS providers offer resource auto-provisioning, auto-scaling and pay-per-use billing at no costs for idle time. This makes it easy to scale running code and it represents an effective and increasingly adopted way to deliver software. This article aims at offering an overview of the existing literature in the field of next-gen FaaS from three different perspectives: (i) the definition of FaaS orchestrations, (ii) the execution of FaaS orchestrations in Fog computing environments, and (iii) the security of FaaS orchestrations. Our analysis identify trends and gaps in the literature, paving the way to further research on securing FaaS orchestrations in Fog computing landscapes

Novel Charging and Discharging Schemes for Electric Vehicles in Smart Grids

PhD ThesisThis thesis presents smart Charging and Discharging (C&D) schemes in the smart grid that enable a decentralised scheduling with large volumes of Electric Vehicles (EV) participation. The proposed C&D schemes use di erent strategies to atten the power consumption pro le by manipulating the charging or discharging electricity quantity. The novelty of this thesis lies in: 1. A user-behaviour based smart EV charging scheme that lowers the overall peak demand with an optimised EV charging schedule. It achieves the minimal impacts on users' daily routine while satisfying EV charging demands. 2. A decentralised EV electricity exchange process matches the power demand with an adaptive blockchain-enabled C&D scheme and iceberg order execution algorithm. It demonstrates improved performance in terms of charging costs and power consumption pro le. 3. The Peer-to-Peer (P2P) electricity C&D scheme that stimulates the trading depth and energy market pro le with the best price guide. It also increases the EV users' autonomy and achieved maximal bene ts for the network peers while protecting against potential attacks. 4. A novel consensus-mechanism driven EV C&D scheme for the blockchain-based system that accommodates high volume EV scenarios and substantially reduces the power uctuation level. The theoretical and comprehensive simulations prove that the penetration of EV with the proposed schemes minimises the power uctuation level in an urban area, and also increases the resilience of the smart grid system

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Digital Management of Competencies in Web 3.0: The C-Box® Approach

Management of competencies is a crucial concern for both learners and workers as well as for training institutions and companies. For the former, it allows users to track and certify the acquired skills to apply for positions; for the latter, it enables better organisation of business processes. However, currently, most software systems for competency management adopted by the industry are either organisation-centric or centralised: that is, they either lock-in students and employees wishing to export their competencies elsewhere, or they require users’ trust and for users to give up privacy (to store their personal data) while being prone to faults. In this paper, we propose a user-centric, fully decentralised competency management system enabling verifiable, secure, and robust management of competencies digitalised as Open Badges via notarization on a public blockchain. This way, whoever acquires the competence or achievement retains full control over it and can disclose his/her own digital certifications only when needed and to the extent required, migrate them across storage platforms, and let anyone verify the integrity and validity of such certifications independently of any centralised organisation. The proposed solution is based on C-Box®, an existing application for the management of digital competencies that has been improved to fully support models, standards, and technologies of the so-called Web 3.0 vision—a global effort by major web organisations to “give the web back to the people”, pushing for maximum decentralisation of control and user-centric data ownership

DEFCON: high-performance event processing with information security

In finance and healthcare, event processing systems handle sensitive data on behalf of many clients. Guaranteeing information security in such systems is challenging because of their strict performance requirements in terms of high event throughput and low processing latency. We describe DEFCON, an event processing system that enforces constraints on event flows between event processing units. DEFCON uses a combination of static and runtime techniques for achieving light-weight isolation of event flows, while supporting efficient sharing of events. Our experimental evaluation in a financial data processing scenario shows that DEFCON can provide information security with significantly lower processing latency compared to a traditional approach

A Method for Securing Symmetric Keys for Internet of Things Enabled Distributed Data Systems

This study introduces an innovative method for securing symmetric keys in Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled distributed data systems, focusing on enhancing data security while optimizing encryption and decryption times. Through a comprehensive analysis of various encryption algorithms—TEA, XTEA, BLOCK TEA (XXTEA), and the proposed NTSA algorithm—across different key sizes and file sizes, we aim to demonstrate the significant improvements our method offers over existing techniques. Our research meticulously evaluated the performance of these algorithms, employing random variations to encryption and decryption times to simulate real-world variability and assess the algorithms' efficiency and security robustness. The findings reveal that the NTSA algorithm, in particular, showcases superior performance, offering an approximate improvement of 10% to 15% in encryption and decryption times over traditional methods such as TEA and XTEA, and an even more considerable enhancement compared to BLOCK TEA (XXTEA). The key contribution of this study lies in its provision of a secure, efficient framework for symmetric key encryption in IoT-enabled distributed environments. By optimizing key size and algorithm selection, our method not only secures data against potential cyber threats but also ensures high-speed data processing—a critical requirement in the IoT domain where the volume of data transactions and the need for real-time processing are ever-increasing. The proposed method significantly advances the field of data security in distributed systems, especially within the context of the burgeoning IoT landscape. It underscores the importance of algorithmic efficiency and strategic key management in bolstering the security and performance of modern digital ecosystems