Automating SLA enforcement in the cloud computing

Cloud computing is playing an increasingly important role, not only by facilitating digital trading platforms but also by transforming conventional services from client-server models to cloud computing. This domain has given the global economic and technological benefits, it offers to both the service providers and service subscribers. Digital marketplaces are no longer limited only to trade tangible commodities but also facilitates enormous service virtualization across various industries. Software as a Service (SaaS) being the largest service segment, dominates the global cloud migration. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and cloud-based application development also known as Platform as a Service (PaaS) are also next-generation computing platforms for their ultimate futuristic demand by both, public and private sector. These service segments are now hosted on cloud platforms to compute, store, and network, an enormous amount of service requests, which process data incredibly fast and economically. Organizations also perform data analytics and other similar computing amenities to manage their business without maintaining on-premise computing infrastructures which are hard to maintain. This computing capability has extensively improved the popularity and increased the demand for cloud services to an extent, that businesses worldwide are heavily migrating their computing resources to these platforms. Diverse cloud service providers take the responsibility of provisioning such cloud-based services for subscribers. In return, a certain subscription fee is charged to them periodically and depending upon the service package, availability and security. On the flip side, such intensive technology shift and outsourcing reliance have also introduced scenarios that any failure on their part leads to serious consequences to the business community at large. In recent years technology industry has observed critical and increased service outages at various cloud service providers(CSP) such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft, Google, which ultimately interrupts the entire supply chain and causes several well-known web services to be taken offline either due to a human error, failed change control implementation or in more recently due to targeted cyber-attacks like DDoS. These web-based solutions such as compute, storage, network or other similar services are provisioned to cloud service subscribers (CSS) platforms. Regardless of a cloud service deployment, a legal binding such as a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is signed between the CSP and CSS. The SLA holds a service scope and guarantees in case of failure. There are probabilities where these SLA may be violated, revoked, or dishonoured by either party, mostly the CSP. An SLA violation along with an unsettled dispute leads to some financial losses for the service subscribers or perhaps cost them their business reputation. Eventually, the subscriber may request some form of compensation from the provider such as a service credit or a refund. In either case, the burden of proof lies with the subscribers, who have to capture and preserve those data or forensically sound system or service logs, supporting their claims. Most of the time, this is manually processed, which is both expensive and time-consuming. To address this problem, this research first analyses the gaps in existing arrangements. It then suggests automation of SLA enforcement within cloud environments and identifies the main properties of a solution to the problem covering various other avenues associated with the other operating environments. This research then subsequently proposes architectures, based on the concept of fair exchange, and shows that how intelligently the approach enforces cloud SLA using various techniques. Furthermore, by extending the research scope covering two key scenarios (a) when participants are loss averse and (b) when interacting participants can act maliciously. Our proposed architectures present robust schemes by enforcing the suggested solutions which are effective, efficient, and most importantly resilient to modern-day security and privacy challenges. The uniqueness of our research is that it does not only ensure the fairness aspect of digital trading but it also extends and logically implements a dual security layer throughout the service exchange. Using this approach protects business participants by securely automating the dispute resolutions in a more resilient fashion. It also shields their data privacy and security from diverse cyber challenges and other operational failures. These architectures are capable of imposing state-of-the-art defences through integrated secure modules along with full encryption schemes, mitigating security gaps previously not dealt with, based upon fair exchange protocols. The Protocol also accomplishes achieving service exchange scenarios either with or without dispute resolution. Finally, our proposed architectures are automated and interact with hardcoded procedures and verifications mechanism using a variant of trusted third parties and trusted authorities, which makes it difficult to cause potential disagreements and misbehaviours during a cloud-based service exchange by enforcing SLA

Bring your own disclosure : analysing BYOD threats to corporate information

Mobile device consumerisation has introduced the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) trend to the organisational context, allowing employees to work using their personal devices. However, as personal mobile devices are perceived as less secure than those provided by the organisation, BYOD has risen security concerns about corporate information being accessed by mobile devices from inside and outside the corporate perimeter. Moreover, this uncontrolled mobile device activity makes it difficult to differentiate external (outsider) malicious activity from reckless/naive employee (insider) behaviour, preventing effective correlation of unauthorised actions with the perpetrators. In this paper, a STRIDE-based BYOD Threat Model is proposed to analyse BYOD Threat Interactions from inside and outside the corporate perimeter. Our research contributes to a better understanding and awareness about the influence of BYOD Threats on disclosure and contamination of corporate information, encouraging future work in the field of BYOD security and digital forensics in order to protect information and manage an increasing number of evidence sources

The Prevalence of Low Vitamin D3 Levels in Patients with Lumbar Disc Herniation and Its Relationship with Different Patient Parameters

Objective:  To determine the prevalence of low vitamin D3 levels in patients having proven lumbar disc herniation and its relationship with different patient parameters. Materials and Methods:  This is a prospective study carried out on 100 patients at the Neurosurgery department, Jinnah postgraduate medical center from Feb 2018 to April 2019. Serum Vitamin D levels and other characteristics were assessed in patients with prolapsed lumbar intervertebral discs. Low levels of Vitamin D were defined as insufficiency (10 ng/ml – 30 ng/ml) and deficiency (< 10 ng/ml). Results:  Out of 100 patients in the study, only 21% had optimal serum vitamin D3 levels, and 79% had hypovitaminosis (57% insufficient and 22% deficiency). Low vitamin D levels were prevalent in all age groups, with deficiency more prevalent in the older age group (p-value = 0.004). The BMI (body mass index) of the patients showed a linear correlation with vitamin D levels. Conclusion:  Decreased vitamin D levels are prevalent in patients having herniated lumbar discs. The study showed that older-aged patients and high BMI exhibited severe vitamin D deficiency. As a result, recommendations are that preventive initiative for this specific hypovitaminosis target a broader population to intercept the occurrence of low vitamin D levels and the associated repercussions

Inter-comparison of SMOS and AMSR-E soil moisture products during flood years (2010–2011) over Pakistan

Global soil moisture products retrieved from various remote sensing sensors are becoming readily available with a nearly daily temporal resolution. With lack of ground observations in Pakistan, microwave sensors are viable technologies for retrieving soil moisture from space. Thus, this study compares soil moisture data from Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) with Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) for 2010 and 2011, which were years where massive flooding occurred. We find suitable correlations (r = 0.47) for Level-2 soil moisture values for both satellites and report temporal variability during the pre-monsoon, monsoon, post-monsoon and winter seasons. This study motivates using satellite retrievals as a start towards more comprehensive studies in Pakistan

Aceclofenac fast dispersible tablet formulations: Effect of different concentration levels of Avicel PH102 on the compactional, mechanical and drug release characteristics.

The objective of this study was based on the formulation development of fast dispersible Aceclofenac tablets (100 mg) and to evaluate the influence of pharmaceutical mixtures of directly compressible Avicel PH102 with Mannitol and Ac-di-sol on the compressional, mechanical characteristics and drug release properties. Fast dispersible Aceclofenac formulations were developed by central composite design (CCD). Among them the best possible formulation was selected on the basis of micromeritic properties, appropriate tablet weight and disintegration time for further study. Tablets were directly compressed using manual hydraulic press with a compressional force ranging from 7.2 to 77.2 MN/m2. Pre and post compression studies were performed and the compressed formulations (FA-FF) were assessed for different quality tests. The Heckel and Kawakita equations were applied for determination of compressional behavior of formulations. The quality attributes suggested that formulation (FB) containing avicel PH 102 (20%), mannitol (25%) and ac-di-sol (3%) as best optimized formulation showing better mechanical strength i.e. hardness 35.40 ± 6.93N, tensile strength 0.963 MN/m2, and friability 0.68%. Furthermore, compressional analysis of FB showed lowest PY value 59.520 MN/m2 and Pk value 1.040 MN/m2 indicating plasticity of the material. Formulation FB disintegrated rapidly within 21 seconds and released 99.92% drug after 45 min in phosphate buffer pH 6.8. Results of drug release kinetics showed that all formulations followed Weibull and First-order models in three different dissolution media. Avicel PH102 based formulation mixture exhibit excellent compactional strength with rapid disintegration and quick drug release

An Efficient Routing Protocol Based on Stretched Holding Time Difference for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

Underwater Wireless Sensors Networks (UWSNs) use acoustic waves as a communication medium because of the high attenuation to radio and optical waves underwater. However, acoustic signals lack propagation speed as compared to radio or optical waves. In addition, the UWSNs also pose various intrinsic challenges, i.e., frequent node mobility with water currents, high error rate, low bandwidth, long delays, and energy scarcity. Various UWSN routing protocols have been proposed to overcome the above-mentioned challenges. Vector-based routing protocols confine the communication within a virtual pipeline for the sake of directionality and define a fixed pipeline radius between the source node and the centerline station. Energy-Scaled and Expanded Vector-Based Forwarding (ESEVBF) protocol limits the number of duplicate packets by expanding the holding time according to the propagation delay, and thus reduces the energy consumption via the remaining energy of Potential Forwarding Nodes (PFNs) at the first hop. The holding time mechanism of ESEVBF is restricted only to the first-hop PFNs of the source node. The protocol fails when there is a void or energy hole at the second hop, affecting the reliability of the system. Our proposed protocol, Extended Energy-Scaled and Expanded Vector-Based Forwarding Protocol (EESEVBF), exploits the holding time mechanism to suppress duplicate packets. Moreover, the proposed protocol tackles the hidden terminal problem due to which a reasonable reduction in duplicate packets initiated by the reproducing nodes occurs. The holding time is calculated based on the following four parameters: (i) the distance from the boundary of the transmission area relative to the PFNs’ inverse energy at the 1st and 2nd hop, (ii) distance from the virtual pipeline, (iii) distance from the source to the PFN at the second hop, and (iv) distance from the first-hop PFN to its destination. Therefore, the proposed protocol stretches the holding time difference based on two hops, resulting in lower energy consumption, decreased end-to-end delay, and increased packet delivery ratio. The simulation results demonstrate that compared to ESEVBF, our proposed protocol EESEVBF experiences 20.2 % lesser delay, approximately 6.66 % more energy efficiency, and a further 11.26 % reduction in generating redundant packets

Supratotal resection: An emerging concept of gliomablastoma multiforme surgery—systematic review and meta-analysis

The severe neurological tumor known as glioblastoma (GBM), also referred to as a grade IV astrocytoma, is rapidly progressive and debilitating. Supratotal resection (SpTR) is an emerging concept within glioma surgery, which aims to achieve a more extensive resection of the tumor than is possible with conventional techniques. We performed a language-independent search of PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane CENTRAL to identify all available literature up to August 2022 of patients undergoing SpTR assessing survival outcomes in comparison to other surgical modalities. After screening for exclusion, a total of 13 studies, all retrospective in design, were identified and included in our meta-analysis. SpTR was associated with significantly increased overall survival (HR=0.77, [0.71-0.84]; p\u3c0.01, I2=96%) and progression-free survival (HR=0.2, [0.07-0.56]; p=0.002, I2=88%

Performance Analysis of Calcium-Doped Titania (TiO₂) as an Effective Electron Transport Layer (ETL) for Perovskite Solar Cells

Ca-doped TiO2 films were synthesized by the modified sol-gel method and employed as the electron transport material of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Morphological, optoelectronic, thermal, and electrical studies of thin films were investigated through XRD, RAMAN, SEM, AFM, UV-Vis, FTIR, and IV characteristics. Ca doping was detected with the help of structural properties while morphological analysis revealed that thin films based on Ca-doped titania are crack-free, homogenous, and uniformly distributed. Further optoelectronic properties have shown a promising conversion efficiency of 9.79% for 2% Ca-doped titania followed by 1% Ca-doped titania, while 3% have shown the lowest conversion efficiency among these prepared samples. The 2% an optimized doping of Ca has shown an almost two-fold increase in conversion efficiency in comparison to pristine TiO2, along with an increase in current density from 15 mA⋅cm−2 to 19.3 mA⋅cm−2. Improved energy efficiency and higher current density are attributed to faster electron transportation; moreover, the optimized percentage of Ca doping seems to be an effective approach to improve the PSCs’ performance

Performance Analysis of Calcium-Doped Titania (TiO2) as an Effective Electron Transport Layer (ETL) for Perovskite Solar Cells

Ca-doped TiO2 films were synthesized by the modified sol-gel method and employed as the electron transport material of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Morphological, optoelectronic, thermal, and electrical studies of thin films were investigated through XRD, RAMAN, SEM, AFM, UV-Vis, FTIR, and IV characteristics. Ca doping was detected with the help of structural properties while morphological analysis revealed that thin films based on Ca-doped titania are crack-free, homogenous, and uniformly distributed. Further optoelectronic properties have shown a promising conversion efficiency of 9.79% for 2% Ca-doped titania followed by 1% Ca-doped titania, while 3% have shown the lowest conversion efficiency among these prepared samples. The 2% an optimized doping of Ca has shown an almost two-fold increase in conversion efficiency in comparison to pristine TiO2, along with an increase in current density from 15 mA⋅cm−2 to 19.3 mA⋅cm−2. Improved energy efficiency and higher current density are attributed to faster electron transportation; moreover, the optimized percentage of Ca doping seems to be an effective approach to improve the PSCs’ performance