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Service Oriented Computing

Internet of Things Search Engine: Concepts, Classification, and Open Issues

Internet of Things (IoT) enabled infrastructures, products, and services are revolutionising the way businesses and societies engage and operate. Billions of devices, small and large, are predicted to be connected via Internet over the coming years. These devices and the systems built upon them will be generating huge amount of data and information that would be leveraged for providing different products and services. One of the core components of such systems will be Internet of Things Search Engines (IoTSE) because without customised search engines, it is not possible to detect and use devices, sensors and  actuators, that form the IoT systems. Hence, it is important to understand various concepts, technologies, and aspects of IoTSE, which is a complicated and relatively immature research topic. The diversity of IoT systems and the content they generate poses a significant challenge to advance the R&D for IoTSE. To fill this gap, we have produced an article to help easily understand the concepts, classification, and open issues for IoTSE. We are glad to share that this article has been accepted in the ACM Communication magazine, which is one of the top venue for ICT publications. This is the pre-print copy of the article, whose abstract below can provide a brief about the content of the article. Read More »Internet of Things Search Engine: Concepts, Classification, and Open Issues

Our New Work on Self-Adaptive Security for large-scale Open Environments

We are continuously progressing on the plan for strengthening our capabilities in Cyber Security. To achieve this goal, we have been not only building internal capabilities but also forming and leveraging strategic collaborations. Out of one of our recent collaborations, with Giannis and Rami, in the areas of Cyber Security has resulted a high quality piece of work that has been accepted in a highly profile journal, ACM Computing Survey. The abstract of this paper is below and can provide some useful insights to the potential readers of this work. We are hoping that this piece of work will lead to systematic classification and comparison of architectural level Cyber Security Solutions and develop and evaluate new techniques, approaches, and tools for designing and evaluating security centric large scale distributed systems. Below is the abstract from the paper.Read More »Our New Work on Self-Adaptive Security for large-scale Open Environments

Data Exfiltration: External Attack Vectors and Countermeasures

With regards to our work on Cyber Security, we have recently successfully completed a collaborative piece fo work with researchers from Security Lancaster, University of Lancaster, UK. Our collaborative work was focused on identifying and understanding Data Exfiltration: External Vectors and Countermeasures and has been accepted in Journal of Network and Computer Applications with the following title and abstract. The pieces of paper provide an extensive literature review that is expected to be leveraged for understanding the key external attack vectors and the countermeasures and the areas for future research.

“Data Exfiltration: A Review of External Attack Vectors and Countermeasures”Read More »Data Exfiltration: External Attack Vectors and Countermeasures

Evaluating Docker for Secure and Scalable Private Cloud with Container Technologies

The ongoing collaboration with the Maritime Division of Defence and Science Technology Group (DST) has resulted in another very useful piece of work that we are very glad to share through this blog. We have been conducting a series of Research and Development (R&D) projects with the same group in the Maritime Division of DST for evaluating technological solutions for building secure and scalable private clouds for mission critical systems. Given the increasing adopting of containerised solutions, our collaborators were interested in evaluating Docker for secure and scale private cloud – that means both security and scalability are the key quality attributes for their domain. Ben Ramsey from my team led the efforts of carrying out this work that has resulted in a detailed technical report. We believe that this technical report will be very useful for anyone interested in knowing about the security and scalability aspects of container technologies like Docker when used for building a private cloud infrastructure. Here is the report titled, Evaluating Docker for Secure and Scalable Private Cloud with Container Technologies, and the abstract has been copied from the report below:Read More »Evaluating Docker for Secure and Scalable Private Cloud with Container Technologies

An Approach to Designing and Evaluating Web of Things (WoT) Systems

Internet of Things (IoT) have emerged a popular technology that underpinning several innovative products and services. Internet of Everything (IoE) or Web of Things (WoT) are real or virtual networks of things (or services) that can be meaningfully quarried or combined in order to build and provide different types of services. Recently, we have a book chapter, Using Reference Architecture for Design and Evaluation of Web of Things Systems, has been included a newly published book, Managing the Web of Things: Linking the Real World to the Web, edited by Michael Sheng, Yongrui Qin, Lina Yao, and Boualem Benatallah. The abstract of our book chapter is below as it may interest to some of the readers. The book chapter provides a methodological approach and technical details about applying a reference architectures to support the design and evaluation of Web of Things Systems. The research involved students from a software architecture course offered at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The abstract of the chapter is below:

Read More »An Approach to Designing and Evaluating Web of Things (WoT) Systems

A Reference Architecture for provisioning of Tools as a Service

We have been developing and maturing a state of the art infrastructure for providing tools as a service. Our work has resulted in a reference architecture provides meta-models, Ontologies, quality attributes, and implementation of an instantiated cloud-based infrastructure for providing tools as a service. Recently, we have published a compressive piece of work in a journal article, titled, A Reference Architecture for provisioning of Tools as a Service: Meta-model, Ontologies and Design Elements, in the journal of Future Generation of Computer Systems. We believe that this piece of work has a great potential for further extension and development for providing tools as a service in multiple engineering domains. The theoretical foundations and practical design techniques developed for this particular piece of work have significant contribution to the body of knowledge on reference architectures for tools as a service. The following abstract of the paper can provide some details about the paper for stimulating the interests of the relevant readers. We are quite keen to receive enquiries for the infrastructure use and collaboration on extending and modifying the infrastructure.Read More »A Reference Architecture for provisioning of Tools as a Service

A Knowledge Base for Microgrid Security Risk Analysis

Through a team of students from the Masters of Software Engineering ME (Software), we started the design and implementation of the first phase of our solution aimed at providing a knowledge-based support for Microgrid security risk analysis. The project was motivated by an increasing realisation that a large number of energy systems are made of multiple sources of energy generation and distribution. Now more and more energy distribution companies are focused on solutions with two-ways of energy movement – energy supply from the energy distribution companies from their conventional or smart grids or energy supply from small, independent energy generators through Microgrids. Whilst a Microgrid provides promising solutions for modernising energy solutions aimed at addressing contemporary challenges, there are several types of challenges involved in designing, building, and operating Microgrids integrated into an energy ecosystem.Read More »A Knowledge Base for Microgrid Security Risk Analysis

Modeling Security-Sensitive Architecture of Systems-of-Systems

An increasing number of software systems are considered Software Intensive Systems of Systems (SiSoS), which consist of dozens of constituent systems. Systems are interconnected using private or public networks, which can be prime target for security attacks. Hence, securing SiSoS is a huge challenge and an emerging areas of research and development. SoS can have several applications domains that can range from smart cities, to defence systems, and industrial control systems. Modeling of and reasoning of security-sensitive architecture of software intensive systems is a challenging piece of work but several modelling approaches and tooling support have been developed. However, there has been no signifiant effort to develop appropriate modelling approach and associated infrastructure for modeling security-senstive architecture of SoS. Led by our collaboratives in France, we have recently developed an approach and tool support for supporting seccutiry-senstive architecture design and analysis .Read More »Modeling Security-Sensitive Architecture of Systems-of-Systems

Systemization of Knowledge about Architecting Cloud-Based Systems

We have been expanding our research on engineering systems with/for Cloud based infrastructures. One of the key challenges of engineering cloud-based systems is designing and evaluating appropriate architectures. Being a relatively new area, knowledge about designing and evaluating cloud-based systems is scarce and but growing. We observed the need of systematically identifying and synthesizing the knowledge about the architectural challenges and solutions for cloud-based systems. For this goal, we used systematic literature review, a well known method of Evidence Based Software Engineering.

I am very glad to share that after several months rigours and tireless efforts, we have published our work in a premier Software Engineering journal, Software: Practice and Experience. The paper can be found on this link and the abstract of the paper is below:Read More »Systemization of Knowledge about Architecting Cloud-Based Systems