84,919 research outputs found
Managing the outsourcing of information security processes: the 'cloud' solution
Information security processes and systems are relevant for any organization and involve medium-to-high investment; however, the current economic downturn is causing a dramatic reduction in spending on Information Technology (IT). Cloud computing (i.e., externalization of one or more IT services) might be a solution for organizations keen to maintain a good level of security. In this paper we discuss whether cloud computing is a valid alternative to in-house security processes and systems drawing on four mini-case studies of higher education institutions in New England, US. Our findings show that the organizationās IT spending capacity affects the choice to move to the cloud; however, the perceived security of the cloud and the perceived in-house capacity to provide high quality IT (and security) services moderate this relationship. Moreover, other variables such as (low) quality of technical support, relatively incomplete contracts, poor defined Service License Agreements (SLA), and ambiguities over data ownership affect the choice to outsource IT (and security) using the cloud. We suggest that, while cloud computing could be a useful means of IT outsourcing, there needs to be a number of changes and improvements to how the service is currently delivered
Addressing the Challenges in Federating Edge Resources
This book chapter considers how Edge deployments can be brought to bear in a
global context by federating them across multiple geographic regions to create
a global Edge-based fabric that decentralizes data center computation. This is
currently impractical, not only because of technical challenges, but is also
shrouded by social, legal and geopolitical issues. In this chapter, we discuss
two key challenges - networking and management in federating Edge deployments.
Additionally, we consider resource and modeling challenges that will need to be
addressed for a federated Edge.Comment: Book Chapter accepted to the Fog and Edge Computing: Principles and
Paradigms; Editors Buyya, Sriram
Trusted Computing and Secure Virtualization in Cloud Computing
Large-scale deployment and use of cloud computing in industry
is accompanied and in the same time hampered by concerns regarding protection of
data handled by cloud computing providers. One of the consequences of moving
data processing and storage off company premises is that organizations have
less control over their infrastructure. As a result, cloud service (CS) clients
must trust that the CS provider is able to protect their data and
infrastructure from both external and internal attacks. Currently however, such
trust can only rely on organizational processes declared by the CS
provider and can not be remotely verified and validated by an external party.
Enabling the CS client to verify the integrity of the host where the
virtual machine instance will run, as well as to ensure that the virtual
machine image has not been tampered with, are some steps towards building
trust in the CS provider. Having the tools to perform such
verifications prior to the launch of the VM instance allows the CS
clients to decide in runtime whether certain data should be stored- or calculations
should be made on the VM instance offered by the CS provider.
This thesis combines three components -- trusted computing, virtualization technology
and cloud computing platforms -- to address issues of trust and
security in public cloud computing environments. Of the three components,
virtualization technology has had the longest evolution and is a cornerstone
for the realization of cloud computing. Trusted computing is a recent
industry initiative that aims to implement the root of trust in a hardware
component, the trusted platform module. The initiative has been formalized
in a set of specifications and is currently at version 1.2. Cloud computing
platforms pool virtualized computing, storage and network resources in
order to serve a large number of customers customers that use a multi-tenant
multiplexing model to offer on-demand self-service over broad network.
Open source cloud computing platforms are, similar to trusted computing, a
fairly recent technology in active development.
The issue of trust in public cloud environments is addressed
by examining the state of the art within cloud computing security and
subsequently addressing the issues of establishing trust in the launch of a
generic virtual machine in a public cloud environment. As a result, the thesis
proposes a trusted launch protocol that allows CS clients
to verify and ensure the integrity of the VM instance at launch time, as
well as the integrity of the host where the VM instance is launched. The protocol
relies on the use of Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for key generation and data protection.
The TPM also plays an essential part in the integrity attestation of the
VM instance host. Along with a theoretical, platform-agnostic protocol,
the thesis also describes a detailed implementation design of the protocol
using the OpenStack cloud computing platform.
In order the verify the implementability of the proposed protocol, a prototype
implementation has built using a distributed deployment of OpenStack.
While the protocol covers only the trusted launch procedure using generic
virtual machine images, it presents a step aimed to contribute towards
the creation of a secure and trusted public cloud computing environment
A look at cloud architecture interoperability through standards
Enabling cloud infrastructures to evolve into a transparent platform while preserving integrity raises interoperability issues. How components are connected needs to be addressed. Interoperability requires standard data models and communication encoding technologies compatible with the existing Internet infrastructure. To reduce vendor lock-in situations, cloud computing must implement universal strategies regarding standards, interoperability and portability. Open standards are of critical importance and need to be embedded into interoperability solutions. Interoperability is determined at the data level as well as the service level. Corresponding modelling standards and integration solutions shall be analysed
Advances in the Design and Implementation of a Multi-Tier Architecture in the GIPSY Environment
We present advances in the software engineering design and implementation of
the multi-tier run-time system for the General Intensional Programming System
(GIPSY) by further unifying the distributed technologies used to implement the
Demand Migration Framework (DMF) in order to streamline distributed execution
of hybrid intensional-imperative programs using Java.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure
Microservices Architecture Enables DevOps: an Experience Report on Migration to a Cloud-Native Architecture
This article reports on experiences and lessons learned during incremental migration and architectural refactoring of a commercial mobile back end as a service to microservices architecture. It explains how the researchers adopted DevOps and how this facilitated a smooth migration
Cloud Storage and Bioinformatics in a private cloud deployment: Lessons for Data Intensive research
This paper describes service portability for a private cloud deployment, including a detailed case study about Cloud Storage and bioinformatics services developed as part of the Cloud Computing Adoption Framework (CCAF). Our Cloud Storage design and deployment is based on Storage Area Network (SAN) technologies, details of which include functionalities, technical implementation, architecture and user support. Experiments for data services (backup automation, data recovery and data migration) are performed and results confirm backup automation is completed swiftly and is reliable for data-intensive research. The data recovery result confirms that execution time is in proportion to quantity of recovered data, but the failure rate increases in an exponential manner. The data migration result confirms execution time is in proportion to disk volume of migrated data, but again the failure rate increases in an exponential manner. In addition, benefits of CCAF are illustrated using several bioinformatics examples such as tumour modelling, brain imaging, insulin molecules and simulations for medical training. Our Cloud Storage solution described here offers cost reduction, time-saving and user friendliness
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