It was a great pleasure to visit the Secure Systems Group at the Aalto University of Finland. I was hosted by Professor N. Asokan, the leader of the group and a leading authority on different… Read More »Building and Leveraging Design Spaces for Architecting Contemporary Software Systems
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
I’m very glad to share that Australian Quarterly has included my article on Smart Cities in the special edition of the best articles published in 2016. Apart from an endorsement of the potential value of the article on an important topic like Smart Cities, the best part of this news is that the special edition is completely free for distribution that is why I have attached it here for download . This article provides a vision and strategies for conceiving and implementing projects that can contribute to building and evolving Smart Cities, which is an umbrella term used for socio-technical innovation for improving the liveability of cities, regions, and suburbs. In this article, I have particularly emphasise the importance of building and sustaining strong collaborative ties among governments, councils, private sectors, and universities for co-conceiving and materialising Smart Cities initiatives and projects. I have particularly highlighted the role and importance of Smart Campus as an experimental testbed for supporting the collaborations for Smart Cities projects.Read More »Article on Smart Cities: Best of 2016 Australian Quarterly
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
A large number of Software Engineering teams are virtual, which are characterised by various types of distances such geographical, culture, temporal, and knowledge. Such distances can cause a number of small and big challenges that lead sub-optimal development teams or event project failures. Software engineering researchers and practitioners have been researching and debating the cost and benefits of site visits for enabling software development teams to spend time together in order to get to know each other professionally and personally. It is argued that such visits result in establishing and growing trust that is important for successful teams. However, software development managers always find it hard to make a strong enough case for investing such visits. We have carried out a longitudinal case study focused on the socio-ethnical dynamics and potential benefits of site visits in terms of enhanced trust and cooperation among team members who came from entirely different regions, culture, region, and socio-economic background. Our study has found very useful insights for software development managers and researchers. We are sharing the details of our study through the pre-print copy of our paper, whose abstract is provided here.
Read More »The Role of Site Visits in Software Engineering Teams
Globally distributed software engineering has become a norm of getting software developed. Whilst there are several potential benefits of getting software teams working around the clock while being located around the World – so-called follow the sun strategy -, there are several challenges in making such teams successfully work together. Communication, coordination, and collaboration are some of the key areas of challenges of global software development – the challenges in these areas either result from or lead to challenges of sharing knowledge – contextual, technical, personal. Software engineering researchers and practitioners always seem to be interested in this area as the challenges of knowledge sharing usually lead to project failure and teaming problems. We are recently published an extensive literature review on knowledge sharing challenges and solutions in global software development. Here is the pre-print copy of our paper, whose abstract is provided below for the interested readers.
Big Data applications are playing critical role for all sorts of organisations. Whilst data scientist is considered a critical role for big data applications, the role of software architect has become even more critical as appropriate design and careful implementation are the key to successful big data applications for supporting organisational decisions and business processes. since this breed of applications are relatively new, the knowledge and experience for designing and evolving architectures for big data applications are in high demand. It is important that organisations build specific knowledge and competency in designing and evaluating software architectures for big data applications – this is one of the key areas where we have been focusing on R&D efforts for sometime now. We have started disseminating our work through different channels for seeking the application of our work through industrial partnerships. Recently, I gave a short talk on designing and evolving architectures for big data applications (Talk’s presentation) during the Adelaide Big Data Meet up called, Big Data Development. Read More »Designing and Evolving Architectures for Big Data Applications
Knowledge sharing is critical for successful software development projects – Software Engineering community has been investing huge amount of efforts in supporting and promoting knowledge sharing over the last many years with mixed outcomes. Knowledge sharing for gaining common understanding is considered a central concern when software development work crosses geographical, cultural, or organizational boundaries. One of our key research topic is knowledge sharing in Globally Distributed teams. Recently I was invited to give a keynote talk at the XIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality (SBQS 2014) to be held in August in Brazil. Here are TalkinBrazil-05August2014 (19 MB size). I spoke about the knowledge sharing challenges and solutions . Read More »Keynote Talk on Knowledge Sharing & Global Software Development