Policy-based management for body-sensor networks

Accepted versio

TOWARDS AUTOMATING POLICY- BASED MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The goal of distributed systems management is to provide reliable, secure and efficient utilization of the network, processors and devices that comprise those systems. The management system makes use of management agents to collect events and data from managed objects while policies provide information on how to modify the behaviour of a managed system. Systems as well as policies governing the behaviour of the system and its constituents can change dynamically. The aim of this work is to provide the services and algorithms needed to automatically identify and deploy management entities and be able to respond automatically to both changes to the system itself as well as to changes in the way the system is to be managed, i.e., changes to the set of management policies or sets of management agents. One significant challenge in the use of policy-based management systems is finding efficient mechanisms to address and simplify the gap between expressing and specifying policies and an actual configuration of a management system that realizes and makes use of policies. Little work has been done to define how the monitoring operations are to be configured and updated according to the policies. This Thesis proposes a general architecture for a policy-based management system for distributed systems which allows for expressing and automating the deployment of a wide range of management policies. The proposed solution is based on the matching between the management operations that are carried out by the management agents and the policies. The matching process relies on the attributes that the agents can monitor and the extracted attributes from the components of the policies. One major contribution of this Thesis is to build the policy model and services on existing management services found in commercial management systems. The work of this Thesis also focuses in finding87 strategies for selecting and configuring agents to be used to keep the time of a policy deployment low. The Thesis introduces the Policy-Management Agent Integrated Console (PMagic) prototype. The PMagic prototype has been implemented to provide a practical validation of the policy based management system model proposed. The approach, architecture and prototype have demonstrated that it is possible to create a more autonomic management system, particularly one that can instantiate agents to react to changes in sets of policies

Policy-Based Management Natural Language Parser

The Policy-Based Management Natural Language Parser (PBEM) is a rules-based approach to enterprise management that can be used to automate certain management tasks. This parser simplifies the management of a given endeavor by establishing policies to deal with situations that are likely to occur. Policies are operating rules that can be referred to as a means of maintaining order, security, consistency, or other ways of successfully furthering a goal or mission. PBEM provides a way of managing configuration of network elements, applications, and processes via a set of high-level rules or business policies rather than managing individual elements, thus switching the control to a higher level. This software allows unique management rules (or commands) to be specified and applied to a cross-section of the Global Information Grid (GIG). This software embodies a parser that is capable of recognizing and understanding conversational English. Because all possible dialect variants cannot be anticipated, a unique capability was developed that parses passed on conversation intent rather than the exact way the words are used. This software can increase productivity by enabling a user to converse with the system in conversational English to define network policies. PBEM can be used in both manned and unmanned science-gathering programs. Because policy statements can be domain-independent, this software can be applied equally to a wide variety of applications

Policy-based Danger Management in Artificial Immune System Inspired Secure Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks

This paper introduces Policy based Management Information Base to manage danger in Artificial Immune System inspired secure routing in Wireless Mesh Networks. WMN management functions are defined and the paper focuses only on the security function. Proposed policy based management and typical operation of the architecture are also reported

A WBEM based solution for a 4G network integrated management

Next generation networks will put a new set of challenges related to operation and management, due to the increased complexity arising by the seamless integration of different kinds of technologies, services and terminals, and with the expected offered bandwidth. In this paper we present a Policy-based management system that is being developed inside the Daidalos IST project for such environments. This system uses Policy Based Management concepts associated with Web-Based Enterprise Management to control QoS aspects in this complex network

An Overview of Ontology Application for Policy-Based Management using POPPET

The use of ontology to describe the key concepts and their interrelationships within a particular area has become a widely recognised and advantageous means of sharing information about the structure of knowledge within a domain. Ontologies provide a way of integrating structured data within an application. This report provides an overview of how the ACCENT policy-based management system [1] was significantly re-engineered to utilise an ontology in place of previously hard-coded, domain-specific information within its user interface. In order to successfully integrate the ontology with the policy system, a new framework named POPPET was developed, responsible for parsing and querying ontological data. Although a substantial alteration in technical structure, the process vastly generalises the policy system, enabling adaptation for policy management within any custom domain. An introduction to the concepts and motivation for ontology creation using OWL is presented, together with general background to the ACCENT policy system. A technical overview is then given covering the developed ontologies, the POPPET system design, and the policy system re-engineering process. Finally, a comparison is made between the new and old policy system structures, and the impact on system performance is evaluated

Policy-Based Management of a Secure Dynamic and Multipoint Virtual Private Network

Although IP VPN technology has recently been imposed because of its cost effectiveness and that several research studies have been proposed for centralized policy management of intra / inter VPN domain, most solutions are only addressed to VPN site-to-site technology, according to our researches no centralized management model based on a server for dynamic multipoint VPN networks was proposed. In this paper we propose a model 201C;DMVPN Security Management System201D;for centralized policy management of dynamic multipoint multi-architectures VPN network, using a new web interface. We have implemented and tested the model on Single Hub Single Cloud architecture consisting of ten Spokes, the time required for an expert on VPN networks for manual set up of this architecture is an hour, we moved that to five minutes with our model, in addition to time effectiveness the margin error is null