Monitoring Multi-Party Contracts for E-Business.

"Monitoring Multi-party Contracts for E-business" investigates the issues involved in the performance of econtract monitoring of business automations in business to business e-commerce environment. A pro-active monitoring contract model and monitoring mechanism have been designed and developed. A new architecture and framework is proposed for pro-active monitorable contracts. This pro-active monitoring contract model is supported by a prototype

Monitoring multi-party contracts for E-business

"Monitoring multi-party contracts for E-business" investigates the issues involved in the performance of econtract monitoring of business automations in business to business e-commerce environment. A pro-active monitoring contract model and monitoring mechanism have been designed and developed. A new architecture and framework is proposed for pro-active monitorable contracts. This pro-active monitoring contract model is supported by a prototyp

A virtual factory for smart city service integration

Tese de Doutoramento em Informática (MAP-i)In the context of smart cities, governments are investing efforts on creating public value through the development of digital public services (DPS) focusing on specific policy areas, such as transport. Main motivations to deliver DPS include reducing administrative burdens and costs, increasing effectiveness and efficiency of government processes, and improving citizens’ quality of life through enhanced services and simplified interactions with governments. To ensure effective planning and design of DPS in a given domain, governments face several challenges, like the need of specialized tools to facilitate the effective planning and the rapid development of DPS, as well as, tools for service integration, affording high development costs, and ensuring DPS conform with laws and regulations. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that many public administrations develop tailored DPS, disregarding the fact that services share common functionality and business processes. To address the above challenges, this thesis focuses on leveraging the similarities of DPS and on applying a Software Product Line (SPL) approach combined with formal methods techniques for specifying service models and verifying their behavioural properties. In particular, the proposed solution introduces the concept of a virtual factory for the planning and rapid development of DPS in a given smart city domain. The virtual factory comprises a framework including software tools, guidelines, practices, models, and other artefacts to assist engineers to automate and make more efficient the development of a family of DPS. In this work the virtual factory is populated with tools for government officials and software developers to plan and design smart mobility services, and to rapidly model DPS relying on SPLs and components-base development techniques. Specific contributions of the thesis include: 1) the concept of virtual factory; 2) a taxonomy for planning and designing smart mobility services; 3) an ontology to fix a common vocabulary for a specific family of DPS; 4) a compositional formalism to model SPLs, to serve as a specification language for DPS; and 5) a variable semantics for a coordination language to simplify coordination of services in the context of SPLs.No contexto das cidades inteligentes, os governos investem esforços na criação de valor público através do desenvolvimento de serviços públicos digitais (DPS), concentrandose em áreas políticas específicas, como os transportes. As principais motivações para entregar o DPS incluem a redução de custos administrativos, o aumento da eficácia dos processos do governo e a melhoria da qualidade de vida dos cidadãos através de serviços melhorados e interações simplificadas com os governos. Para garantir um planeamento efetivo do DPS num determinado domínio, os governos enfrentam vários desafios, como a necessidade de ferramentas especializadas para facilitar o planeamento eficaz e o rápido desenvolvimento do DPS, bem como ferramentas para integração de DPS, reduzindo altos custos de desenvolvimento e garantindo que os DPS estejam em conformidade com as leis e regulamentos. Esses desafios são exacerbados pelo fato de que muitas administrações públicas desenvolvem o DPS sob medida, desconsiderando o fato de que os serviços compartilham funcionalidade e processos de negócios comuns. Para enfrentar os desafios, esta tese concentra-se em aproveitar as semelhanças dos DPS aplicando uma abordagem de Software Product Lines (SPL) combinada com métodos formais para especificar modelos de DPS e verificar propriedades. Em particular, introduz o conceito de uma fábrica virtual (VF) para o planeamento e desenvolvimento rápido de DPS num domínio de cidade inteligente. A VF compreende ferramentas de software, diretrizes, modelos e outros artefatos para auxiliar os engenheiros a automatizar e tornar mais eficiente o desenvolvimento de uma família de DPS. Neste trabalho, a VF é preenchida com ferramentas para várias partes para planear e projetar serviços de mobilidade inteligente (MI), e modelar rapidamente o DPS com base em SPLs e técnicas de desenvolvimento baseadas em componentes. Contribuições específicas da tese incluem: 1) o conceito de VF; 2) uma taxonomia para planear serviços de MI; 3) uma ontologia para fixar um vocabulário comum para uma família específica de DPS; 4) um formalismo composicional para modelar SPLs, e servir como uma linguagem de especificação para DPS; e 5) uma semântica variável para uma linguagem de coordenação para simplificar a coordenação.This work was funded by FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, through the Operational Programme for Human Capital (POCH). Grant reference: PD/BD/52238/201

Cyber defensive capacity and capability::A perspective from the financial sector of a small state

This thesis explores ways in which the financial sectors of small states are able todefend themselves against ever-growing cyber threats, as well as ways these states can improve their cyber defense capability in order to withstand current andfuture attacks. To date, the context of small states in general is understudied. This study presents the challenges faced by financial sectors in small states with regard to withstanding cyberattacks. This study applies a mixed method approach through the use of various surveys, brainstorming sessions with financial sector focus groups, interviews with critical infrastructure stakeholders, a literature review, a comparative analysis of secondary data and a theoretical narrative review. The findings suggest that, for the Aruban financial sector, compliance is important, as with minimal drivers, precautionary behavior is significant. Countermeasures of formal, informal, and technical controls need to be in place. This study indicates the view that defending a small state such as Aruba is challenging, yet enough economic indicators indicate it not being outside the realm of possibility. On a theoretical level, this thesis proposes a conceptual “whole-of-cyber” model inspired by military science and the VSM (Viable Systems Model). The concept of fighting power components and governance S4 function form cyber defensive capacity’s shield and capability. The “whole-of-cyber” approach may be a good way to compensate for the lack of resources of small states. Collaboration may be an only out, as the fastest-growing need will be for advanced IT skillsets

Practical Use of High-level Petri Nets

This booklet contains the proceedings of the Workshop on Practical Use of High-level Petri Nets, June 27, 2000. The workshop is part of the 21st International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets organised by the CPN group at the Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark. The workshop papers are available in electronic form via the web pages: http://www.daimi.au.dk/pn2000/proceeding

Towards Automated Network Configuration Management

Modern networks are designed to satisfy a wide variety of competing goals related to network operation requirements such as reachability, security, performance, reliability and availability. These high level goals are realized through a complex chain of low level configuration commands performed on network devices. As networks become larger, more complex and more heterogeneous, human errors become the most significant threat to network operation and the main cause of network outage. In addition, the gap between high-level requirements and low-level configuration data is continuously increasing and difficult to close. Although many solutions have been introduced to reduce the complexity of configuration management, network changes, in most cases, are still manually performed via low--level command line interfaces (CLIs). The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has introduced NETwork CONFiguration (NETCONF) protocol along with its associated data--modeling language, YANG, that significantly reduce network configuration complexity. However, NETCONF is limited to the interaction between managers and agents, and it has weak support for compliance to high-level management functionalities. We design and develop a network configuration management system called AutoConf that addresses the aforementioned problems. AutoConf is a distributed system that manages, validates, and automates the configuration of IP networks. We propose a new framework to augment NETCONF/YANG framework. This framework includes a Configuration Semantic Model (CSM), which provides a formal representation of domain knowledge needed to deploy a successful management system. Along with CSM, we develop a domain--specific language called Structured Configuration language to specify configuration tasks as well as high--level requirements. CSM/SCL together with NETCONF/YANG makes a powerful management system that supports network--wide configuration. AutoConf supports two levels of verifications: consistency verification and behavioral verification. We apply a set of logical formalizations to verifying the consistency and dependency of configuration parameters. In behavioral verification, we present a set of formal models and algorithms based on Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) to capture the behaviors of forwarding control lists that are deployed in firewalls, routers, and NAT devices. We also adopt an enhanced version of Dyna-Q algorithm to support dynamic adaptation of network configuration in response to changes occurred during network operation. This adaptation approach maintains a coherent relationship between high level requirements and low level device configuration. We evaluate AutoConf by running several configuration scenarios such as interface configuration, RIP configuration, OSPF configuration and MPLS configuration. We also evaluate AutoConf by running several simulation models to demonstrate the effectiveness and the scalability of handling large-scale networks