Security Architecture Research Articles

When and how the ‘Neighbours’ matter: ‘Immediate’ opportunity structures in the Eastern neighbourhood and policy frame-alignment by the EU

ABSTRACT The paper examines the external opportunity structures of the EU’s eastern neighbours during times of high security threat. The research investigates when and to what extent opportunities in the neighbourhood affect EU engagement and shape policy-frame alignment. The study introduces the concept of an ‘immediate’ opportunity structure and concludes that the EU’s decisions to initiate or alter policy frames towards countries in the Eastern neighbourhood are driven by immediate security-related opportunity structures that exist at the moment of decision-making. Furthermore, the EU’s decision to engage depends on whether the security threat in the region and the neighbourhood directly affects the Union’s security architecture. As the political environment in the neighbourhood becomes more open and concessions towards the EU increase, the EU boosts its engagement, reflected in its policy alignment. The paper claims that the EU strategy prioritises immediate opportunity structures over indicators of long-term achievements in target countries. This focus on immediate opportunities aims to address, create, and further expand long-term opportunity structures.

Analyzing Threat Level of the Backdoor Attack Method for an Organization’s Operation

Backdoor attacks played a critical part in the catastrophe, as well as the overall impact of cyberattacks. Backdoor assaults are additionally influencing the landscape of malware and threats, forcing companies to concentrate more on detecting and establishing vulnerability tactics in order to avoid hostile backdoor threats. Despite advances in cybersecurity systems, backdoor assaults remain a source of concern because of their propensity to remain undetected long after the attack vector has been started. This research is aimed to examine the threats of backdoor attack methods in an organization's operational network, provide a full-scale review, and serve as direction for training and defensive measures. The fundamental inspiration was drawn from the alarming and involving threat in cybersecurity, which necessitates a better awareness of the level of risk and the concurrent requirement for increased security measures. Most traditional security solutions usually fail to detect harmful backdoors due to the stealthy nature of backdoor code within the system, necessitating a unique approach to full-scale threat analysis. A multi-phase approach that begins with considerable reading and examination of existing literature to get insight into typical backdoor attack methodologies and application methods. Following analysis, testing was carried out in a virtual lab in a controlled environment because thorough malware analysis testing must adhere to ethical and legal cyber testing laws to avoid any penalties or foolish breaches. This methodology also included testing on numerous attack channels combined with backdoor attacks, such as detecting software vulnerabilities, phishing emails, and direct payload injection, to determine the complexity of the different attack vectors. Each of the collected data is utilized to create a threat model that predicts the amount of risk associated with the backdoor attack approach. The finding contributes to the development of more resilient defence mechanisms, while also strengthening the overall organization's security architecture and protocols.

What Do News Editorials Point to in the Framing of Nigerian National Security? Does Media Content Project Public Lens or Elites Power Hierarchies?

Growing cases of the role of media in national security tend to suggest that news is reflective of on the spot assessment. Yet, a corpus of literature shows that media influence is highly dominated by elites’ power, where media framing projects more of these power and influence. This paper therefore expounds on the extent to which news media editorials are reflective of public concerns or portray more of elites’ power. Succinctly, the aim is to explore what media editorials point to in the framing of national security issues. In view of the precarity of insecurity and mounting challenges of Nigeria’s national security, it is pertinent to unravel what constantly preoccupies media establishments, mostly, their editorial contents. And what trajectory and path do they tilt towards in the broader mediatization of the nation’s national issues occasioned by terrorism, militancy, banditry, kidnapping and other crimes. Overall, the paper provides a clue about how news editorials showcase and often pander to hierarchal power within Nigeria’s national security architecture.

Layer based epidemiological quality assessment of architecture of care security and geriatric wards

The article describes the potential use of an original model called the layered epidemiological assessment (warstwowa ocena epidemiologiczna - WOE) for assessing the potential risk of infections in facilities intended for elderly individuals. To verify the possibility of using the WOE method for assessing epidemiological safety hazards in the built environment, available literature sources related to the legal requirements in Poland regarding the assessment of medical facility ergonomics in terms of infection transmission were analyzed. The article also referred to the guidelines of the New European Bauhaus and the Baukultur Quality System as a standardized method for assessing the quality of the built environment. The article presents the fundamental assumption of the author's WOE method, which allows for the assessment of the risk of infection transmission separately for each component of a building. The effectiveness of the method was demonstrated by using it to assess the risk of infections in a geriatric ward room as an example. The article demonstrates that by employing the WOE, it is possible to clearly differentiate potential infection routes within the analyzed facilities and assign them to specific building components. Furthermore, by applying the presented method, it is possible to define necessary procedures and develop action plans to minimize the risk of infection spread within the analyzed properties. The application of the WOE for evaluating architectural solutions in facilities intended for the elderly offers several benefits. The WOE method presented in the article can serve as an expert tool for quick and precise assessment of potential epidemiological hazards. An important advantage of the WOE method is its ability to be used separately for different types of epidemiological hazards characterized by different routes of infection transmission. Med Pr Work Health Saf. 2024;75(3):199-209.

Hybrid quantum architecture for smart city security

Currently and in the near future, Smart Cities are vital to enhance urban living, address resource challenges, optimize infrastructure, and harness technology for sustainability, efficiency, and improved quality of life in rapidly urbanizing environments. Owing to the high usage of networks, sensors, and connected devices, Smart Cities generate a massive amount of data. Therefore, Smart City security concerns encompass data privacy, Internet-of-Things (IoT) vulnerabilities, cyber threats, and urban infrastructure risks, requiring robust solutions to safeguard digital assets, citizens, and critical services. Some solutions include robust cybersecurity measures, data encryption, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven threat detection, public–private partnerships, standardized security protocols, and community engagement to foster a resilient and secure smart city ecosystem. For example, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) helps in real-time monitoring, threat detection, and incident response by aggregating and analyzing security data. To this end, no integrated systems are operating in this context. In this paper, we propose a Hybrid Quantum-Classical Architecture for bolstering Smart City security that exploits Quantum Machine Learning (QML) and SIEM to provide security based on Quantum Artificial Intelligence and patterns/rules. The validity of the hybrid quantum-classical architecture was proven by conducting experiments and a comparison of the QML algorithms with state-of-the-art AI algorithms. We also provide a proof of concept dashboard for the proposed architecture.

Blockchain-Based Caching Architecture for DApp Data Security and Delivery.

Decentralized applications (DApps) built on blockchain technology offer a promising solution to issues caused by centralization. However, traditional DApps leveraging off-chain storage face performance challenges due to factors such as storage location, network speed, and hardware conditions. For example, decentralized storage solutions such as IPFS suffer from diminished download performance due to I/O constraints influenced by data access patterns. Aiming to enhance the Quality of Service (QoS) in DApps built on blockchain technology, this paper proposes a blockchain node-based distributed caching architecture that guarantees real-time responsiveness for users. The proposed architecture ensures data integrity and user data ownership through blockchain while maintaining cache data consistency through local blockchain data. By implementing local cache clusters on blockchain nodes, our system achieves rapid response times. Additionally, attribute-based encryption is applied to stored content, enabling secure content sharing and access control, which prevents data leakage and unauthorized access in unreliable off-chain storage environments. Comparative analysis shows that our proposed system achieves a reduction in request processing latency of over 89% compared to existing off-chain solutions, maintaining cache data consistency and achieving response times within 65 ms. This demonstrates the model's effectiveness in providing secure and high-performance DApp solutions.

Legal Conditions for the Implementation of the "Silencing Weapons by 2020" Program of the African Union Agenda for the Period Up to 2063

Silencing weapons by 2020 is an ambitious project of the African Union contained in the ‘Agenda 2063 the Africa we want’. According to aspiration 4 (32) of that Agenda, the achievement of that project requires that mechanisms for peaceful prevention and resolution of conflicts should be functional at all levels. Therefore, that article doesn’t name those mechanisms. In the first aspect of his reflection, the author analyzes those mechanisms as being the peace and security architecture, which is the main mechanism designed to prevent and manage conflicts in Africa, as well as to strengthen peace and to which the African Union (AU) adhered, Regional Economic Communities (RECs) as well as Regional mechanisms (RM); and the African Union Court of Justice and Human Rights, which is a merger of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) and the Court of Justice of the African Union(CJAU) and is the primary judicial agency of the African Union and the first regional court with international criminal jurisdiction. Further in his analysis, the author explains that the failure to meet the silence the guns by 2020 program and the postponement until 2030 has been a consequence of the non-achievement of the mechanisms mentioned in aspiration 4(32). The author ends up his analysis on the conclusion according to which if those mechanisms are not put in place there is a high risk that the second deadline scheduled for 2030, will also not be met. He therefore calls for the complete implementation of the ASP and for the ratification of the CJDHUA Treaty. If this is not possible, to demonstrate realism by setting the deadline for silence the guns in a period after the implementation of the mechanisms provided for in aspiration 4 of Agenda 2063.

India-Japan Relations @ 70: From Civilisational to Strategic Partnership

The rapidly changing strategic scenarios in Asia have increased Japan’s ties with India over the last few years. Major global and regional geo-political shifts have taken place in the contemporary world, which include the rise of China, the US policy of rebalancing and pivoting to Asia, and the response of regional countries, evolution of a new security architecture in Asia, maritime security challenges in Indian and Pacific Oceans, nuclear tests by North Korea, tensions on account of territorial disputes in South China Sea and East China, the evolution of ASEAN into an ASEAN community. In these contexts, the two Asian democracies have made concerted attempts to intensify their relationship at various levels- economic, strategic and political. Though the two countries had never exhibited much keenness in each other’s priorities, a confluence of various factors such as structural, domestic and individual leadership have given a new push to the bilateral relationship in recent years. The present paper attempts to examine and evaluate the changing dimensions of bilateral relations between the two Asian democracies against the backdrop of the Indo-Pacific region's evolving security and strategic scenarios.

Architecture and iot security systems based on fog computing

The subject of the study is is the security architecture of the Internet of Things (IoT) based on fog computing, which allows providing efficient and secure services for many IoT users. The goal is to investigate the security architecture for IoT systems based on fog computing. To achieve the goal, the following tasks were solved: the concept of fog computing is proposed, its architecture is considered and a comparative analysis of fog and cloud computing architectures is made; the principles of designing and implementing the architecture of a fog computing system are outlined; multi-level security measures based on fog computing are investigated; and the areas of use of fog computing-based Internet of Things networks are described. When performing the tasks, such research methods were used as: theoretical analysis of literature sources; analysis of the principles of designing and implementing the security architecture of the Internet of Things; analysis of security measures at different levels of the architecture. The following results were obtained: the architecture of fog computing is considered and compared with the cloud architecture; the principles of designing and implementing the architecture of fog computing systems are formulated; multi-level IoT security measures based on fog computing are proposed. Conclusions: research on IoT security systems based on fog computing has important theoretical implications. The fog computing architecture, in contrast to the cloud architecture, better meets the demand for high traffic and low latency of mobile applications, providing more advantages for systems that require real-time information processing. When designing and implementing the architecture of fog computing systems, the factors of memory capacity, latency, and utility should be taken into account to effectively integrate fog technologies with IoT. To ensure a high level of system security, multi-level security measures should be implemented using both software and hardware solutions.

Maturation by practice: shaping the EU’s international identity in the absence of formal institutional change

ABSTRACT This article examines the interplay of the maturation of the EU’s identity as an international foreign and security actor with the institutionalisation of its foreign and security architecture. While the formal policy- and decision-making modes within the CFSP/CSDP have changed little during the past 25 years, the EU’s international identity did still change over time, potentially indicating a “coming of age”. How can we explain this maturation of the EU’s foreign and security identity despite the critique of the EU’s inefficiency and lack of adequateness in security policy? By means of re-interpreting existing scholarship, we argue that the relative maturation of the EU’s foreign and security identity since the Lisbon Treaty is not so much linked to formal institutional change (“maturation by design”), but rather to changing informal institutional practice and the selection and use of respective instruments (“maturation by practice”). This dynamic, we argue, is due to an interplay of internal and external factors, accompanied by ongoing socialisation of member states in how they perceive the nature of the CFSP/CSDP and the EU as an international foreign and security actor.

WITHDRAWN: CSCAD: An adaptive LightGBM algorithm to detect cache side-channel attacks

Cache side-channel attacks have become more sophisticated and more destructive to the security of computer architectures than ever before, which can obtain the plaintext of a victim without key. To address the challenges introduced by cache side-channel attacks, anomaly detection and feature detection were proposed. However, these methods have drawbacks in terms of computational performance and detection effectiveness. In this paper, we proposed a Cache Side-Channel Attack Detector (CSCAD), a novel tool for detecting cache side-channel attacks against memory events. Specifically, we design a collector using Hardware Performance Counters and use improved Maximum Information Coefficient to generate feature vectors. Meanwhile, an adaptive genetic algorithm with crossover and mutation probability is proposed to optimize the hyperparameters of LightGBM. Additionally, an adaptive loss function weight model with low overhead is introduced to enhance the efficiency of attack detection. It is encouraging to see that CSCAD achieved a recall of 98.14%. In detecting 1000 samples, it boosted the detection speed by approximately 75% compared to conventional machine learning methods. CSCAD has outperformed the state-of-the-art methods by simultaneously achieving excellent detection speed and effectiveness.

Building a Scientific Foundation for Security: Multilayer Network Model Insights for System Security Engineering

AbstractTo help incorporate security into INCOSE's Systems Engineering Vision 2035, the INCOSE systems security engineering working group endorses a paradigmatic shift to reframe systems security as trustworthy, loss‐driven, and capabilities‐based. Similar research out of Sandia National Laboratories has explored cutting‐edge approaches to systems security for national security applications. Together, these efforts highlight the need for—‐and a path toward—‐a scientific foundation for security. Leveraging underlying tenets of systems theory, observed security heuristics, and the concepts emerging from INCOSE's SSE working helps triangulate a set of “first principles” as part of a scientific foundation for security as an emergent systems property that incorporates traditional physical security designs, cyber security architectures, and personnel security programs—‐as well as the (often ignored) interactions between them. These first principles, in turn, are the basis for a set of derived systems security performance axioms that support current INCOSE SSE working efforts. We have demonstrated this approach's logic and designability with a multilayer network model‐based approach for systems security. The structure of this scientific foundation for security offers additional, innovative opportunities to achieve desired levels of trustworthiness, creative mechanisms to meet needs, innovative loss‐driven approaches, and enhanced capabilities—‐all aimed at producing more efficient and effective systems security solutions against current and emerging threats, uncertainties, and complexities.

A Viewpoint: Safer Heaps With Practical Architectural Security Primitives

A Viewpoint: Safer Heaps With Practical Architectural Security Primitives

The UN and NATO as the Main Pillars of the International Security Architecture with a Focus on the Middle East Region

This study provides a summary overview of the creation and the activities of the international security architecture in the form of their two main pillars, i.e. the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Near and Middle East region. Within the framework of international security relations, this is a very unstable and conflictual region, where this instability has lasted practically since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The global UN, its overall activity and importance, especially humanitarian and peace-building activities not only for the Near and Middle East region, is very beneficial, through out the Cold War period up to the present day. As a security organization, NATO is among the most important global actors influencing current international security relations. Through their activities, both of these organizations represent a essential means of ensuring world peace and security.

Rise of Hindutva and the Security Architecture of South Asia

Rise of Hindutva and the Security Architecture of South Asia

Decentralizing security architecture: evaluating federalism’s role in enhancing security frameworks in Nigeria

Decentralizing security architecture: evaluating federalism’s role in enhancing security frameworks in Nigeria

Security, Privacy, and Decentralized Trust Management in VANETs: A Review of Current Research and Future Directions

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are powerful platforms for vehicular data services and applications. The increasing number of vehicles has made the vehicular network diverse, dynamic, and large-scale, making it difficult to meet the 5G network’s demanding requirements. Decentralized systems are interesting and provide attractive services because they are publicly available (transparency), have an append-only ledger (robust integrity protection), remove single points of failure, and enable distributed key management and communication in a peer-to-peer network. Researchers dedicated substantial efforts to advancing vehicle communications, however conventional cryptographic mechanisms are insufficient which enabled us to look at decentralized technologies. Therefore, we revisit decentralized approaches with VANETs. Endpoint devices hold a wallet which may incorporate threshold key management methods like MPC wallets, HD Wallets, or multi-party threshold ECDSA/EdDSA/BLS. We also discuss trust management approaches and demonstrate how decentralization can improve integrity, security, privacy, and resilience to single points of failure. We also conduct a comprehensive review, comparing them with current requirements, and the latest authentication and secure communication architectures, which require the involvement of trusted but non-transparent authorities in certificate issuance/revocation. We highlight the limitations of these schemes from PKI deployment and recommend future research, particularly in the realm of quantum cryptography.

SECURITY DIMENSION OF THE GLOBAL ISSUES

The article deals with current global issues of our time in their security dimension. An attempt has been made to outline the various directions of influence of global problems on the security architecture in today’s conditions. It was proposed to divide the global problems of our time into natural-ecological and socio-economic ones. At the same time, in our opinion, pandemics occupy an intermediate position between natural and anthropogenic problems. It has been argued that the modern economy is less vulnerable to natural disasters than it has been before, but natural disasters take more lives due to the high population density in the modern world. Human impact on the environment has been extremely destructive. Air pollution on a catastrophic scale is observed in large cities of the developing countries. Deforestation and desertification are making more and more areas uninhabitable. Global warming and climate change are seen not only in the rise in temperature, but also in the appearance of weather anomalies, the melting of glaciers, and the rise in the level of the World Ocean. The appearance of «climate migrants» has been explained to be one of the consequences of climate change. The combination of natural and social dimensions of global issues has been illustrated with the examples of conflicts over water. Socio-economic problems are mostly determined by the imperfection of society. This article has dealt with the demographic problem in different dimensions: in the Western countries there is a demographic crisis, and in the developing countries there is a demographic explosion, which has been shown using the example of Nigeria, Egypt, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, etc. Poverty in these countries has an important impact on economic security. A large number of people do not have the basic necessities for life (food, safe water and sanitation, shelter, healthcare, etc.) and live in conditions of absolute poverty. In some countries, the literacy rate is still quite low. The globalisation of criminal activity also a danger. Some countries, such as Haiti, can fall under the control of criminal groups. Terrorism is a type of crime that deserves to be investigated separately for many reasons. All the listed problems are extremely urgent in the conditions of inefficient political management. Solving issues related to security and overcoming the consequences of global issues is possible only in the presence of an effectively functioning public administration system. But creating a good governance system is a difficult task under conditions of dictatorship or the absence of legitimate state power. The issue of supporting international security in all spheres is a topical problem in international politics. It has been underlined that joint efforts can help to overcome of the explored issues.

AIR PROTECTION ENCRYPTION PROTOCOLS FOR SECURING AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL COMMUNICATION

The article presents a detailed analysis of the encryption protocols used in air traffic control systems to ensure the security of communication between aircraft and ground systems. The importance of secure communication in air traffic management is highlighted and encryption protocols such as AES, RSA and ECC are examined within the specific context of air traffic control. Special emphasis is placed on secure communication architecture and cryptographic key management solutions. Challenges and solutions in implementing these protocols in complex environments with high security requirements are also discussed.

Against network attacks in renewable power plants: Malicious behavior defense for federated learning

As reducing carbon emissions can relieve environmental concerns, networks-supported renewable power plants are being built more and more. Inevitable network attacks have become a serious threat in increasing and distributed power plants. Leveraging federated learning for training the joint model to detect network attacks in distributed power plants is efficient, but two malicious behaviors of cheating and free-riding are unavoidable. To this end, we design a new SDN based federated security architecture and propose a carbon-credit-rewarded consensus verification mechanism in this architecture to deal with malicious behaviors. For this architecture, on the one hand, considering geographical conditions of renewable power plants, multi-controller SDN is adopted in network to solve some security problems at root and to avoid single point of failure. On the other hand, the segmentation of collaborative zones reduces communication cost effectively. The proposed mechanism establishes consensus bearer and realizes the election of consensus bearer by cross-validation of client detection models. Only the excellent models are aggregated to mitigate cheating of malicious clients. Carbon emissions credit is introduced as an incentive in the proposed mechanism. The redistribution of carbon emissions credit improves the performance of global detection model and avoids free-riding. Moreover, the economic nature of carbon emissions credit enhances the spillover effect of carbon emissions trading market on the reduction of carbon emissions. The experimental results revealed that the proposed architecture has excellent performance, and can handle malicious behaviors effectively.