Introduction to the thematic issue on Intelligent systems, applications and environments for the industry of the future

Recent advances in the area of ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence and intelligent environments are making inroads in business-oriented application domains. This issue of JAISE addresses core topics on the design, use and evaluation of smart applications and systems for the factory of the future, an emerging trend perhaps better known as Industry 4.0. The digital transformation in the enterprise envisioned by Industry 4.0 will entwine the cyber-physical world and real world of manufacturing to deliver networked production with enhanced process transparency. Production systems, data analytics and cloud-enabled business processes will interact directly with customers to realize the ambitious goal of single lot individualized manufacturing. This thematic issue features a survey and 5 research articles which address the modeling, designing, implementation, assessment and management of intelligent systems, applications and environments that will shape and advance the smart industry of the future.status: publishe

Efficiency and Security of Process Transparency in Production Networks - A View of Expectations, Obstacles and Potentials

Much of the resilience and flexibility of production networks lies in the transparency of processes that allows timely perception of actual process states and adequate decisions or intervention at the proper point of the production system. Such degree of observability and permeability do, however, bear risks of malevolent tapping or interference with the information stream which, in the case of production systems, can put both business and physical processes at risk, requiring careful exploration of security threats in horizontal and vertical integration, and individual end-to-end connections likewise. Also, different levels of networked production present specific needs—high throughput and low time lag on the shop-floor level, or tolerances for confidence, gambling and bounded-rational views in cross-company relations—that may conflict with security policies. The paper presents a systematic summary of such apparently contradicting preferences, and possible approaches of reconciliation currently perceived to be relevant on various abstraction levels of production networks.status: publishe

Policy reconciliation for access control in dynamic cross-enterprise collaborations

In dynamic cross-enterprise collaborations, different enterprises form a – possibly temporary – business relationship. To integrate their business processes, enterprises may need to grant each other limited access to their information systems. Authentication and authorization are key to secure information handling. However, access control policies often rely on non-standardized attributes to describe the roles and permissions of their employees which convolutes cross-organizational authorization when business relationships evolve quickly. Our framework addresses the managerial overhead of continuous updates to access control policies for enterprise information systems to accommodate disparate attribute usage. By inferring attribute relationships, our framework facilitates attribute and policy reconciliation, and automatically aligns dynamic entitlements during the evaluation of authorization decisions. We validate our framework with a Industry 4.0 motivating scenario on networked production where such dynamic cross-enterprise collaborations are quintessential. The evaluation reveals the capabilities and performance of our framework, and illustrates the feasibility of liberating the security administrator from manually provisioning and aligning attributes, and verifying the consistency of access control policies for cross-enterprise collaborations.status: publishe