InterCloud: Utility-Oriented Federation of Cloud Computing Environments for Scaling of Application Services

Cloud computing providers have setup several data centers at different geographical locations over the Internet in order to optimally serve needs of their customers around the world. However, existing systems do not support mechanisms and policies for dynamically coordinating load distribution among different Cloud-based data centers in order to determine optimal location for hosting application services to achieve reasonable QoS levels. Further, the Cloud computing providers are unable to predict geographic distribution of users consuming their services, hence the load coordination must happen automatically, and distribution of services must change in response to changes in the load. To counter this problem, we advocate creation of federated Cloud computing environment (InterCloud) that facilitates just-in-time, opportunistic, and scalable provisioning of application services, consistently achieving QoS targets under variable workload, resource and network conditions. The overall goal is to create a computing environment that supports dynamic expansion or contraction of capabilities (VMs, services, storage, and database) for handling sudden variations in service demands. This paper presents vision, challenges, and architectural elements of InterCloud for utility-oriented federation of Cloud computing environments. The proposed InterCloud environment supports scaling of applications across multiple vendor clouds. We have validated our approach by conducting a set of rigorous performance evaluation study using the CloudSim toolkit. The results demonstrate that federated Cloud computing model has immense potential as it offers significant performance gains as regards to response time and cost saving under dynamic workload scenarios.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, conference pape

Confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation in smartgrids

Tese de mestrado em Segurança Informática, apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa, através da Faculdade de Ciências, 2011No actual contexto macroeconómico mundial é essencial a adopção de novas formas de geração de energia, alternativas à utilização de recursos fósseis, combinada com os objectivos de fiabilidade e qualidade dos fornecimentos e de indução de competitividade nos mercados. Torna-se necessário produzir, transportar e distribuir energia de forma sustentável sem prejudicar o ecossistema. A visão de uma infraestrutura com maior controlo, onde redes, produtores e consumidores têm papeis significativamente mais activos, está a provocar uma mudança de paradigma nas redes eléctricas e na sua gestão que se materializa no conceito das Smart Grids. Para obter um elevado nível de controlo de operação da rede, necessário para a concretização das funcionalidades prometidas pelas Smart Grids, a arquitectura terá que evoluir de modo a comportar um maior número de unidades remotas inteligentes, o desenvolvimento de novos sistemas técnicos e comerciais, o aumento de trocas de mensagens entre aplicações e a interligações entre diversas redes. Esta complexidade é bastante maior daquela que poderemos encontrar nas actuais infra-estruturas de sistemas de informação para a transmissão e distribuição de energia eléctrica e apresenta novos desafios no que diz respeito à disponibilidade da rede e, em particular, à sua segurança. Os novos equipamentos, aplicações, hardware, protocolos de comunicação, operação e administração da rede vão introduzir novas potenciais vulnerabilidades que podem ser exploradas por indivíduos mal intencionados ou simplesmente por erros de operação. Esta preocupação acerca da disponibilidade e segurança da rede de energia eléctrica do futuro evidenciam a importância que assumem a segurança e disponibilidade da infra-estrutura dos sistemas de informação e comunicações que a suportam. Este trabalho propõem-se analisar a confiabilidade das Smart Grids no que diz respeito aos seus aspectos de segurança de tecnologias de informação, incidindo em particular no projecto Português de Smart Grid denominado InovGrid. Este projecto de investigação irá descrever as funcionalidades da arquitectura InovGrid fazendo uma análise detalhada dos vectores de ataque e os riscos eminentes associados à sua implementação. Este estudo irá avaliar e propor soluções no domínio da autenticidade, confidencialidade e não-repudiação de informação numa arquitectura peculiar e heterogenia com a das Smart Grids.In the current global macroeconomic context is essential to adopt new ways of generating energy alternatives to fossil fuels, combined with the objectives of reliability and quality of delivery and induction of competitiveness in markets. It is necessary to produce, transport and distribute energy in a sustainable way without harming the ecosystem. The vision of an infrastructure with more control, where networks, producers and consumers have significantly more active roles, is causing a paradigm shift in electricity networks and their operations that is embodied in the concept of Smart Grids. To obtain a high level of control required to achieve the new features promised by Smart Grids, the architecture will need to comprise more intelligent remote terminal units, the development of new technical and commercial systems, the increase of the number of messages exchange between applications and also interconnections between enterprise networks. This complexity, far higher than found in present transmission and distribution infrastructures, will bring several challenges considering network reliability and security in particular. All the new devices, applications, hardware, communication protocols, network operations and administration will introduce potential vulnerabilities that might be explored by malicious users or simple by erroneous actions from a variety of external and internal sources. This concern about security and reliability of the future power grids increase the importance of the information technology and communications infrastructures and their security. This work proposes to analyze Smart Grid’s reliability regarding its information technology security but focusing the study in the Portuguese Smart Grid project implementation, named as InovGrid. It will describe the functionalities of the InovGrid architecture providing a detailed analysis of its attack vectors and the eminent risks associated with the implementation. It will propose and analysis solutions for confidentiality, authenticity and non-repudiation aspects in such peculiar and heterogeneous networks

Cybercrime and Risks for Cyber Physical Systems

Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) is the integration of computation and physical systems that make a complete system such as the network, software, embedded systems, and physical components. Major industries such as industrial plants, transport, national grid, and communication systems depend heavily on CPS for financial and economic growth. However, these components may have inherent threats and vulnerabilities on them that may run the risk of being attacked, manipulated or exploited by cyber attackers and commit cybercrimes. Cybercriminals in their quest to bring down these systems may cause disruption of services either for fame, data theft, revenge, political motive, economic war, cyber terrorism, and cyberwar. Therefore, identifying the risks has become imperative in mitigating the cybercrimes. This paper seeks to identify cybercrimes and risks that are associated with a smart grid business application system to determine the motives and intents of the cybercriminal. The paper identified four goals to mitigate the risks: as business value, organizational requirements, threat agent and impact vectors. We used the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the importance of the goals that contribute to identifying cybercrime and risks in CPS. For the results, a case study is used to identify the threat and vulnerable spots and the prioritized goals are then used to assess the risks using a semi-quantitative approach to determine the net threat level. The results indicate that using the AHP approach to identify cybercrime and risk on CPS provides specific risk mitigation goals

Elastic Business Process Management: State of the Art and Open Challenges for BPM in the Cloud

With the advent of cloud computing, organizations are nowadays able to react rapidly to changing demands for computational resources. Not only individual applications can be hosted on virtual cloud infrastructures, but also complete business processes. This allows the realization of so-called elastic processes, i.e., processes which are carried out using elastic cloud resources. Despite the manifold benefits of elastic processes, there is still a lack of solutions supporting them. In this paper, we identify the state of the art of elastic Business Process Management with a focus on infrastructural challenges. We conceptualize an architecture for an elastic Business Process Management System and discuss existing work on scheduling, resource allocation, monitoring, decentralized coordination, and state management for elastic processes. Furthermore, we present two representative elastic Business Process Management Systems which are intended to counter these challenges. Based on our findings, we identify open issues and outline possible research directions for the realization of elastic processes and elastic Business Process Management.Comment: Please cite as: S. Schulte, C. Janiesch, S. Venugopal, I. Weber, and P. Hoenisch (2015). Elastic Business Process Management: State of the Art and Open Challenges for BPM in the Cloud. Future Generation Computer Systems, Volume NN, Number N, NN-NN., http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2014.09.00

What role does corporate governance play in the intention to use cloud computing technology?

This paper aims to investigate the factors which promote the adoption of cloud-based technology. It strives for a better understanding of the impact of corporate governance on the adoption of this technology. This study concentrated on executives in companies where the use of cloud computing may give a competitive advantage. The main contribution of this work is to propose a model for the influence of corporate governance and other factors that determine the adoption of this technology. A questionnaire was prepared after taking into consideration the reviewed literature. The sample consisted of 164 technology companies from Southern Spain that already use the new economic models for digital solutions. The methodology used to analyze the structural model was the Structural Equation Model (SEM). The results of the survey showed the influence of Corporate Governance and the procedures and practices of the organization on the adoption of cloud computing and the associated business model. This study aims to point out the importance of corporate support and Knowledge Management for the correct and successful adoption of this technology and to show the effects on the new business model of billing for the use of available resources. View Full-Tex