Security Level Of System Research Articles

Artificial Intelligence-Driven Composition and Security Validation of an Internet of Things Ecosystem

Key challenges in Internet-of-Things (IoT) system design and management include the secure system composition and the calculation of the security and dependability level of the final system. This paper presents an event-based model-checking framework for IoT systems’ design and management, called CompoSecReasoner. It invokes two main functionalities: (i) system composition verification, and (ii) derivation and validation of security, privacy, and dependability (SPD) metrics. To measure the SPD values of a system, we disassemble two well-known types of security metrics—the attack surface methodologies and the medieval castle approach. The first method determines the attackable points of the system, while the second one defines the protection level that is provided by the currently composed system-of-systems. We extend these techniques and apply the Event Calculus method for modelling the dynamic behavior of a system with progress in time. At first, the protection level of the currently composed system is calculated. When composition events occur, the current system status is derived. Thereafter, we can deploy reactive strategies and administrate the system automatically at runtime, implementing a novel setting for Moving Target Defenses. We demonstrate the overall solution on a real ambient intelligence application for managing the embedded devices of two emulated smart buildings.

Modeling the Effect of Spending on Cyber Security by Using Surplus Process

In this paper, we assume the security level of a system is a quantifiable metric and apply the insurance company ruin theory in assessing the defense failure frequencies. The current security level of an information system can be viewed as the initial insurer surplus; defense investment can be viewed as premium income resulting in an increase in the security level; cyberattack arrivals follow a Poisson process, and the impact of attacks is modeled as losses on the security level. The occurrence of cyber breach is modeled as a ruin event. We use this framework to determine optimal investment in cyber security that minimizes the total cyber costs. We show by numerical examples that there is an optimal allocation of total cyber security budget to (1) IT security maintenance/upkeep spending versus (2) external cyber risk transfer.

DQN-Based Optimization Framework for Secure Sharded Blockchain Systems

High levels of scalability and reliability are needed to support the massive Internet-of-Things (IoT) services. In particular, blockchains can be effectively used to safely manage data from large-scale IoT networks. However, current blockchain systems have low transactions per second (TPS) rates and scalability limitations that make them unsuitable. To solve the above issues, this article proposes a deep Q network shard-based blockchain (DQNSB) scheme that dynamically finds the optimal throughput configuration. In this article, a novel analysis of sharded blockchain latency and security-level characterization is provided. Using the analysis equations, the DQNSB scheme estimates the level of maliciousness and adapts the blockchain parameters to enhance the security level considering the amount of malicious attacks on the consensus process. To achieve this purpose, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agents are trained to find the optimal system parameters in response to the network status, and adaptively optimizes the system throughput and security level. The simulation results show that the proposed DQNSB scheme provides a much higher TPS than the existing DRL-enabled blockchain technology while maintaining a high security level.

Ensemble-Based Spam Detection in Smart Home IoT Devices Time Series Data Using Machine Learning Techniques

The number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices is growing at a fast pace in smart homes, producing large amounts of data, which are mostly transferred over wireless communication channels. However, various IoT devices are vulnerable to different threats, such as cyber-attacks, fluctuating network connections, leakage of information, etc. Statistical analysis and machine learning can play a vital role in detecting the anomalies in the data, which enhances the security level of the smart home IoT system which is the goal of this paper. This paper investigates the trustworthiness of the IoT devices sending house appliances’ readings, with the help of various parameters such as feature importance, root mean square error, hyper-parameter tuning, etc. A spamicity score was awarded to each of the IoT devices by the algorithm, based on the feature importance and the root mean square error score of the machine learning models to determine the trustworthiness of the device in the home network. A dataset publicly available for a smart home, along with weather conditions, is used for the methodology validation. The proposed algorithm is used to detect the spamicity score of the connected IoT devices in the network. The obtained results illustrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm to analyze the time series data from the IoT devices for spam detection.

Information System Security Analysis of XYZ Company Using COBIT 5 Framework and ISO 27001:2013

Information system security is now very important to prevent from an attack. Besides that, low level security can harm the productivity of an organization. The purpose of this research is to ascertain and know the level of information system security in XYZ Company, because it has never conducted an audit information system security. In this research, it used the COBIT 5 framework to audit information security management system in a company based on the ISO 27001 standard. This audit was conducted to identify information system security that was not good. In addition to improving the information security management system that will be adjusted to the ISO 27001 standard. This research was composed by applying a qualitative methodology, observation of the activity in the company and reviews related information security management system literature document existing. For the auditing using COBIT 5 framework, audit focuses on four kinds process that consists of APO12, DSS05, MEA02 dan EDM03. The audit COBIT 5 two results in consisting of “Managed Process” Level on APO12, MEA02 and EDM03 and “Performed Process” level on DSS05. The resulting of this research will be used a reference to the improvement of existing information system security in the company.

Research on Comprehensive Energy Management System Technology

This paper studies the research status of the energy internet and integrated energy management platform, the analysis of the improvement of energy efficiency and economic efficiency of clean energy of distributed power, and the establishment of mathematical models for some parts of the energy management system and analysis to evaluate different types of pluripotent complementary system of comprehensive benefits, from the three-dimensional aspects of economic, environmental and other aspects of system security level and the establishment of systems for comprehensive benefit evaluation system, and the various indicators and correlation tests standardization process. The case analysis of the proposed model is carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed evaluation model and the comprehensive benefits of the multi-energy complementary system in the park.

Energy Security Analysis for a 100% Renewable Energy Transition in Jordan by 2050

Energy security analysis is a strong tool for policy makers. It allows them to formulate policies that would enhance energy systems by targeting necessary actions. In this study, the impacts of transitioning from a fossil fuels to a renewables dominated energy system on energy security is analysed for Jordan. A Best Policy Scenario was developed for the Jordanian energy system to trace the transition to a 100% renewable energy system. Energy security was analysed for the future system by a qualitative approach utilising colour codes. The results reveal that the primary energy demand increases from 64 TWh in 2015 to 130 TWh in 2050, dominated by electricity and followed by heat and bioenergy. This indicates that a high level of direct and indirect electrification is the key to transition towards a fully sustainable energy system. Renewable electricity generation is projected to increase from 0.1 TWh in 2015 to 110.7 TWh in 2050, with a solar photovoltaic share of 92%. The levelised cost of energy develops from 78 €/MWh in 2015 to 61 €/MWh in 2050. In 2050, this system will have zero greenhouse gas emissions, it will provide plenty of job opportunities and revenue generation. This proposed transition will enhance the energy security level of the Jordanian energy system in five of the six dimensions studied. The five dimensions that will be improved are availability, cost, environment, health, and employment, whereas the dimension on diversity will stay neutral. It can be concluded that Jordan can achieve a 100% renewable energy system by 2050 and such a transition will enhance the energy security level.

Enhancing the Physical Layer Security of OFDM-PONs With Hardware Fingerprint Authentication: A Machine Learning Approach

We propose and demonstrate an identity authentication method in the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing passive optical network (OFDM-PON) by recognizing device fingerprints of optical network units (ONUs). Signal decomposition methods based on wavelet transform are implemented to extract feature matrixes during the pre-process of samples, and then a trained 2-D convolutional neural network (2D-CNN) is applied to classify and identify these feature matrixes. Experimental results show that the identity of legitimate ONUs can be successfully recognized and 97.41% identification accuracy is achieved. A rogue ONU can be detected with an identification accuracy of 100%, which indicates that the ability of PONs to resist identity spoofing attack is effectively improved. The robustness of the scheme is also verified. With the proposed strategy, the security level of PON system at the physical layer can be increased markedly.

An Interledger Blockchain Platform for Cross-Border Management of Cybersecurity Information

Cybersecurity certification is a core notion to support the mitigation of cybersecurity risks of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). At the European Union (EU) level, the Cybersecurity Act establishes a common cybersecurity certification framework supporting the coexistence of different certification schemes across Member States. However, its realization needs to be sustained by technical approaches to enable ICT stakeholders from different sectors or countries to exchange cybersecurity information and evaluate the up-to-date security level of an ICT system throughout their lifecycle. Toward this end, we propose a blockchain-based platform using a novel interledger design, where ledgers associated with ICT artifacts, cybersecurity certificates, and vulnerabilities are interconnected. The main purpose is to leverage the advantages of blockchain in terms of distributed trust, transparency, and accountability, while at the same time coping with scalability, performance, and interoperability requirements. We analyze the impact of our platform in the current EU legislation and provide insights for its deployment.

A Generalized Information Security Model SOCMD for CMD Systems

As a new security defense theory, Cyberspace mimic defense (CMD) provides an architecture named Dynamic heterogeneous redundancy (DHR) to enhance the defense level of system security. Due to the new dynamic defense mechanism DHR introduced in CMD systems, traditional security modelling and analysis methods can hardly be used for them. In this paper, we propose a Security ontology-based modelling method for CMD systems (SOCMD), which uses ontology to represent DHR components and to define their inner relationships. SOCMD also connects information components including DHRs with security vulnerabilities, threats and attackers in cyberspace. Next, attacking rules, multi-mode arbitration mechanism and combination rules are designed with SOCMD for CMD systems and a new logical-checking method is proposed to make judgement about the security state of SOCMD. Finally, different use cases and performance tests are developed to demonstrate the application process for the model and to verify the validity of our method.

Розвиток методичних підходів до оцінки рівня фінансової безпеки банківської системи України

This article is devoted to the studying the methodological approaches to assessing the financial security level of the banking system. It is proposed to supplement the set of indicators defined by the Methodology for assessing the level of economic security in terms of banking security, such as: ratio of total assets of the banking system to GDP, ratio of external debt to total assets of banks, return on assets of the TOP-10 largest banks, profitability of banks which will allow for a more detailed assessment of the financial security level of the banking sector and take the necessary measures to prevent the effects of negative factors. The authors analyze the main indicators of the banking component of the financial security in Ukraine during 2007-2018. Considerable attention is paid to the analysis of the quality of the credit portfolio of the banking system. The main external and internal factors that caused an increase in the share of long-outstanding accounts payable in the credit portfolio of the domestic banking system are identified. Based on the analysis, it is concluded that, both in the crisis and post-crisis periods, the vast majority of indicators exceed the safe limits, which indicates a critically low level of financial security of the Ukrainian banking system.

Analysis of academic service cybersecurity in university based on framework COBIT 5 using CMMI

A secure academic information system is part of the college. The security of academic information systems is very important to maintain information optimally and safely. Along with the development of technology, academic information systems are often misused by some irresponsible parties that can cause threats. To prevent these things from happening, it is necessary to know the extent to which the security of the academic information system of universities is conducted by evaluating. So the research was conducted to determine the Maturity Level on the governance of the security of University Ahmad Dahlan academic information system by using the COBIT 5 framework on the DSS05 domain. The DSS05 domain on COBIT 5 is a good framework to be used in implementing and evaluating related to the security of academic information systems. Whereas to find out the achievement of evaluation of academic information system security level, CMMI method is needed. The combination of the COBIT 5 framework on the DSS05 domain using the CMMI method in academic information system security is able to provide a level of achievement in the form of a Maturity Level value. The results of the COBIT 5 framework analysis of the DSS05 domain use the CMMI method to get a Maturity level of 4,458 so that it determines the achievement of the evaluation of academic information systems at the tertiary level is Managed and Measurable. This level, universities are increasingly open to technological developments. Universities have applied the quantification concept in each process, and are always monitored and controlled for performance in the security of academic information systems.

A Markov Model of Non-Mutually Exclusive Cyber Threats and its Applications for Selecting an Optimal Set of Information Security Remedies

In this work, we study a Markov model of cyber threats that act on a computer system. Within the framework of the model the computer system is considered as a system with failures and recoveries by analogy with models of reliability theory. To estimate functionally-temporal properties of the system we introduce a parameter called the lifetime of the system and defined as the number of transitions of the corresponding Markov chain until the first hit to the final state. Since this random variable plays an important role at evaluating a security level of the computer system, we investigate in detail its random distribution for the case of mutually exclusive cyber threats; in particular, we derive explicit analytical formulae for numerical characteristics of its distribution: expected value and dispersion. Then we generalize substantially the Markov model dropping the assumption that cyber threats acting on the system are mutually exclusive. This modification leads to an extended Markov chain that has (at least qualitatively) the same structure as the original chain. This fact allowed to generalize the above analytical results for the expected value and dispersion of the lifetime to the case of non-mutually exclusive cyber threats. At the end of the work the Markov model for non-mutually exclusive cyber threats is used to state a problem of finding an optimal configuration of security remedies in a given cyber threat space. It is essential that the formulated optimization problems belong to the class of non-linear discrete (Boolean) programming problems. Finally, we consider an example that illustrate the solution of the problem on selecting the optimal set of security remedies for a computer system.

Securing the LoRaWAN join procedure using blockchains

LoRaWAN, part of the long range Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, is a Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) protocol that enables communication between the battery operated resource constrained devices. Although LoRaWAN provides system-level security, these networks are based on a basic assumption of trust between the network server and the user, which as a result empowers a network server with undue authorities. Moreover, the nature of the LoRaWAN join procedure, which is a key component for ensuring network operation, is highly susceptible to jamming and replay attacks through slight packet manipulation, thus making the network vulnerable. In order to address these deficiencies, we present a blockchain-based distributed framework for the LoRaWAN join procedure, in order to provide a secure and trusted authentication system within LoRaWAN networks. Our proposed solution eliminates the jamming and replay attack threats against the LoRaWAN join procedure and in addition builds trust among LoRa end devices and network servers. The framework is endorsed by a Proof of Concept (PoC) implementation using the Ethereum blockchain which is used to evaluate the proposed system in realistic LoRaWAN network scenarios. The simulations results indicate that the proposed solution achieves efficient system performance up to an upper bound on the load level which involves 30 join requests from 1000 concurrent clients.

ESSENCE: GPU-based and dynamic key-dependent efficient stream cipher for multimedia contents

Data Confidentiality (DC) is considered one of the most important security services. Currently, a set of existing cipher algorithms is being used to ensure DC. However, researchers constantly investigate the design and implementation of more efficient cipher schemes. To this end, different versions of AES have been implemented efficiently on GPUs to increase the efficiency over big data. However, AES implementation on GPU exhibits limitations in terms of latency and hence, it might not be a suitable solution for high data rates in modern systems and applications. This often leads to a trade-off between system performance and security level. To address these challenges, we propose “ESSENCE”, a lightweight stream cipher scheme, which combines two different Pseudo-Random Number Generators (PRNG), and based on a dynamic key approach. The scheme achieves a high level of security with minimal latency and required resources when compared to existing cipher standards such as AES. Moreover, the implementation of the proposed dynamic key-dependent cipher scheme on GPU is more efficient compared to all existing AES implementations on GPUs. Experimental results indicate that the proposed cipher is highly efficient with a throughput more than 115 GB/s on a Titan X GPU, and more than 372 GB/s on a Titan V100 GPU. Thus, ESSENCE can be considered as a promising stream cipher candidate with high randomness degree (BigCrush of TestU01), periodicity, and key sensitivity.

Computer Information System Construction Based on Information System Security Level and Structure Model

Computer Information System Construction Based on Information System Security Level and Structure Model

A security metric for assessing the security level of critical infrastructures

The deep integration between the cyber and physical domains in complex systems make very challenging the security evaluation process, as security itself is more of a concept (i.e., a subjective property) than a quantifiable characteristic. Traditional security assessing mostly relies on the personal skills of security experts, often based on best practices and personal experience. The present work is aimed at defining a security metric allowing evaluators to assess the security level of complex cyber-physical systems (CPSs), as critical infrastructures, in a holistic, consistent and repeatable way. To achieve this result, the mathematical framework provided by the open source security testing methodology manual (OSSTMM) is used as the backbone of the new security metric, since it allows to provide security indicators capturing, in a non-biased way, the security level of a system. Several concepts, as component lifecycle, vulnerability criticality and damage potential - effort ratio are embedded in the new security metric framework, developed in the scope of the H2020 project ATENA.

A security metric for assessing the security level of critical infrastructures

The deep integration between the cyber and physical domains in complex systems make very challenging the security evaluation process, as security itself is more of a concept (i.e., a subjective property) than a quantifiable characteristic. Traditional security assessing mostly relies on the personal skills of security experts, often based on best practices and personal experience. The present work is aimed at defining a security metric allowing evaluators to assess the security level of complex cyber-physical systems (CPSs), as critical infrastructures, in a holistic, consistent and repeatable way. To achieve this result, the mathematical framework provided by the open source security testing methodology manual (OSSTMM) is used as the backbone of the new security metric, since it allows to provide security indicators capturing, in a non-biased way, the security level of a system. Several concepts, as component lifecycle, vulnerability criticality and damage potential - effort ratio are embedded in the new security metric framework, developed in the scope of the H2020 project ATENA.

A Survey on Security and Privacy Challenges in Device Discovery for Next-Generation Systems

Device to Device (D2D) communications is a candidate technology for the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond mobile networks and certainly that results in high throughput, less energy consumption, reduce delay, and data traffic offload. Proximity services are the key enablers of D2D communications. A D2D technology boosts the performance and capacity of a conventional cellular system through the proximity services. To initiate the proximity services, Device Discovery (DD) is one of the the primary tasks. A DD makes the decision for effective D2D communications in terms of accuracy, speed, and minimum energy consumption. To discover the neighbor devices, the discovery signal is transmitted directly or through some access points. The discovery signal is affected by invaders during transmission which causes inaccuracy, energy consumption, and latency. Therefore, security and privacy issues must be addressed, especially in discovery signal transmission. In this paper, security and privacy issues in DD are highlighted. It is comprehensive and proves that in-band is much better than out-band with practical and technological reasons. To enhance the scope of the research, network level, and system level Security and Privacy (S&P) issues in the distributed and centralized systems environment with or without central management are surveyed. Along with an extensive survey is provided for the most recent work on DD concerning security and privacy issues, and comparison among in-band and out-band DD is performed. In the end, open issues are identified as future work on DD security and privacy in D2D communications. It is a novel survey in terms of security and privacy aspects of DD with possible suggested solutions for readers' motivation.

Realistic Optimal Power Flow of a Wind-Connected Power System With Enhanced Wind Speed Model

The complexity of achieving optimal power flow in the presence of renewable resources decreases the accuracy and optimality levels of the power system due to the associated intermittency and uncertainty. The increased challenge of large-scale deployment of wind energy necessitates the proper modeling of wind impact on power system security and reliability levels . This article discusses a new reliable power flow optimization tool that accounts for wind power availability and uncertainty. An accurate wind forecast model is created to maintain power system security considering wind power variability. The error of the forecasting phase is included in the proposed model to accurately predict the available wind power. In this work, the scattered wind data is converted into informative frequency distribution considering the effect of averaging around integers, halves, and quarters. The proposed method maximizes the utilization level of wind energy without deteriorating the system security. The accuracy of the new proposed work is presented by comparing its results with other models discussed in the literature. A complete and integrated formulation of the objective function has been accomplished. The cost function includes transmission losses, generation operating costs, generation gas emissions, and valve-point effects. Reliable and efficient optimization algorithms are adopted to minimize the established cost function of the system—namely, teaching-learning-based optimization and symbiotic organisms search algorithms. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated using the IEEE 39-bus system.