CamFlow: Managed Data-sharing for Cloud Services

A model of cloud services is emerging whereby a few trusted providers manage the underlying hardware and communications whereas many companies build on this infrastructure to offer higher level, cloud-hosted PaaS services and/or SaaS applications. From the start, strong isolation between cloud tenants was seen to be of paramount importance, provided first by virtual machines (VM) and later by containers, which share the operating system (OS) kernel. Increasingly it is the case that applications also require facilities to effect isolation and protection of data managed by those applications. They also require flexible data sharing with other applications, often across the traditional cloud-isolation boundaries; for example, when government provides many related services for its citizens on a common platform. Similar considerations apply to the end-users of applications. But in particular, the incorporation of cloud services within `Internet of Things' architectures is driving the requirements for both protection and cross-application data sharing. These concerns relate to the management of data. Traditional access control is application and principal/role specific, applied at policy enforcement points, after which there is no subsequent control over where data flows; a crucial issue once data has left its owner's control by cloud-hosted applications and within cloud-services. Information Flow Control (IFC), in addition, offers system-wide, end-to-end, flow control based on the properties of the data. We discuss the potential of cloud-deployed IFC for enforcing owners' dataflow policy with regard to protection and sharing, as well as safeguarding against malicious or buggy software. In addition, the audit log associated with IFC provides transparency, giving configurable system-wide visibility over data flows. [...]Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Technical Report on Deploying a highly secured OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure using BradStack as a Case Study

Cloud computing has emerged as a popular paradigm and an attractive model for providing a reliable distributed computing model.it is increasing attracting huge attention both in academic research and industrial initiatives. Cloud deployments are paramount for institution and organizations of all scales. The availability of a flexible, free open source cloud platform designed with no propriety software and the ability of its integration with legacy systems and third-party applications are fundamental. Open stack is a free and opensource software released under the terms of Apache license with a fragmented and distributed architecture making it highly flexible. This project was initiated and aimed at designing a secured cloud infrastructure called BradStack, which is built on OpenStack in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Bradford. In this report, we present and discuss the steps required in deploying a secured BradStack Multi-node cloud infrastructure and conducting Penetration testing on OpenStack Services to validate the effectiveness of the security controls on the BradStack platform. This report serves as a practical guideline, focusing on security and practical infrastructure related issues. It also serves as a reference for institutions looking at the possibilities of implementing a secured cloud solution.Comment: 38 pages, 19 figures

Multi-tenant hybrid cloud architecture

This paper examines the challenges associated with the multi-tenant hybrid cloud architecture and describes how this architectural approach was applied in two software development projects. The motivation for using this architectural approach is to allow developing new features on top of monolithic legacy systems – that are still in production use – but without using legacy technologies. The architectural approach considers these legacy systems as master systems that can be extended with multi-tenant cloud-based add-on applications. In general, legacy systems are run in customer-operated environments, whereas add-on applications can be deployed to cloud platforms. It is thus imperative to have a means connectivity between these environments over the internet. The technology stack used within the scope of this thesis is limited to the offering of the .NET Core ecosystem and Microsoft Azure. In the first part of the thesis work, a literature review was carried out. The literature review focused on the challenges associated with the architectural approach, and as a result, a list of challenges was formed. This list was utilized in the software development projects of the second part of the thesis. It should be noted that there were very few high-quality papers available focusing exactly on the multi-tenant hybrid cloud architecture, so, in the end, source material for the review was searched separately for multi-tenant and for hybrid cloud design challenges. This factor is noted in the evaluation of the review. In the second part of the thesis work, the architectural approach was applied in two software development projects. Goals were set for the architectural approach: the add-on applications should be developed with modern technology stacks; their delivery should be automated; their subscription should be straightforward for customer organizations and they should leverage multi-tenant resource sharing. In the first project a data quality management tool was developed on top of a legacy dealership management system. Due to database connectivity challenges, confidentiality of customer data and authentication requirements, the implemented solution does not fully utilize the architectural approach, as having the add-on application hosted in the customer environment was the most reasonable solution. Despite this, the add-on application was developed with a modern technology stack and its delivery is automated. The subscription process does involve certain manual steps and, if the customer infrastructure changes over time, these steps must be repeated by the developers. This decreases the scalability of the overall delivery model. In the second project a PDA application was developed on top of a legacy vehicle maintenance tire hotel system. The final implementation fully utilizes the architectural approach. Support for multi-tenancy was implemented using ASP.NET Core Dependency Injection and Finbuckle.MultiTenancy-library. Azure Relay Hybrid Connection was used for hybrid cloud connectivity between the add-on application and the master system. The delivery model incorporates the same challenges regarding subscription and customer infrastructure changes as the delivery model of the data quality management tool. However, the manual steps associated with these challenges must be performed only once per customer – not once per customer per application. In addition, the delivery model could be improved to support customer self-service governance, enabling the delegation of any customer environment installations to the customers themselves. Even further, the customer environment installation could potentially cover an entire product family. As an example, instead of just providing access for the PDA application, the installation could provide access for all vehicle maintenance family add-on applications. This would make customer environment management easier and developing new add-on applications faster

Cloud-assisted body area networks: state-of-the-art and future challenges

Body area networks (BANs) are emerging as enabling technology for many human-centered application domains such as health-care, sport, fitness, wellness, ergonomics, emergency, safety, security, and sociality. A BAN, which basically consists of wireless wearable sensor nodes usually coordinated by a static or mobile device, is mainly exploited to monitor single assisted livings. Data generated by a BAN can be processed in real-time by the BAN coordinator and/or transmitted to a server-side for online/offline processing and long-term storing. A network of BANs worn by a community of people produces large amount of contextual data that require a scalable and efficient approach for elaboration and storage. Cloud computing can provide a flexible storage and processing infrastructure to perform both online and offline analysis of body sensor data streams. In this paper, we motivate the introduction of Cloud-assisted BANs along with the main challenges that need to be addressed for their development and management. The current state-of-the-art is overviewed and framed according to the main requirements for effective Cloud-assisted BAN architectures. Finally, relevant open research issues in terms of efficiency, scalability, security, interoperability, prototyping, dynamic deployment and management, are discussed

A Scheme for improving data confidentiality in the cloud computing environment

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Computer-Based Information Systems (MSIS) at Strathmore UniversityCloud computing has ushered in an era whereby small and medium sized companies enjoy computing power which was usually a preserve for big corporations. Despite these benefits, the present cloud data confidentiality techniques are still evolving, and as they evolve so are the threats, hence posing security and privacy challenges, thus becoming an impediment to cloud adoption. Currently, cases have been cited where hackers have stolen stored cloud data, later to appear in social media embarrassing the firms. Among the key vulnerabilities attributed to loss of cloud data include: account hijacking, malicious insider breaches, data breaches attributed to weak Identity and access management, phishing, SQL injection, among others. Several research articles have been reviewed with some proposed solutions but these solutions have fallen short of addressing account hijacking and malicious insider threats. In addition, the online survey conducted highlighted that insider breaches are among the main form of vulnerability to cloud data. These challenges within the cloud storage informed the basis for the design of a scheme for improving data confidentiality in the cloud computing environment. The data confidentiality is achieved by implementing authentication login which triggers a six digit code to be sent to a client mobile or e-mail for further authentication, thus, enabling situational awareness of data breaches in real-time. This approach will enhance reliability and trust of cloud services enabling users to maximize on potential benefits offered by the cloud environment

Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions

Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues, challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems

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