Current Issue : October - December Volume : 2013 Issue Number : 4 Articles : 4 Articles
In this paper we report upon the cloud-based solution that we designed and implemented for space situational\r\nawareness. We begin by introducing the background to the work and to the area of space situational awareness. This\r\nconcerns tracking the hundreds of thousands of known objects in near-Earth orbits, and determining where it is\r\nnecessary for satellite operators to conduct collision-avoidance manoeuvres to protect their satellites. We also discuss\r\nactive debris removal, which would be necessary to stabilise the debris population at current levels. We examine the\r\nstrengths that cloud-based solutions offer in general and how these specifically fit to the challenges of space\r\nsituational awareness, before describing the architecture we designed for this problem. We demonstrate the feasibility\r\nof solving the space situational awareness problem with a cloud-based architecture and note that as time goes on and\r\ndebris levels rise due to future collisions, the inherent scalability offered by a cloud-based solution will be invaluable....
We describe the research undertaken in the six month JISC/EPSRC funded My Private\r\nCloud project, in which we built a demonstration cloud file storage service that\r\nallows users to login to it, by using their existing credentials from a configured\r\ntrusted identity provider. Once authenticated, users are shown a set of accounts that\r\nthey are the owners of, based on their identity attributes. Once users open one of\r\ntheir accounts, they can upload and download files to it. Not only that, but they can\r\nthen grant access to their file resources to anyone else in the federated system,\r\nregardless of whether their chosen delegate has used the cloud service before or\r\nnot. The system uses standard identity management protocols, attribute based\r\naccess controls, and a delegation service. A set of APIs have been defined for the\r\nauthentication, authorisation and delegation processes, and the software has been\r\nreleased as open source to the community. A public demonstration of the system is\r\navailable online....
Cloud computing takes away much of the need to plan future IT demands from the\r\nconsumer, and puts it in the hands of the provider. Consumers donââ?¬â?¢t need to give\r\nadvance notice to start or terminate virtual machines, and can do so in real time to\r\nreflect changing business objectives. It is the task of the cloud IaaS provider to\r\noptimise the use of her infrastructure, and ensure there are enough resources\r\navailable. Achieving optimum server utilisation in the data centre is particularly\r\nchallenging ââ?¬â?? advance notification can help the provider to schedule workloads\r\nmore efficiently, but this is at odds with one of the key benefits of cloud computing.\r\nIn this paper, we propose a pricing method that combines options contracts with\r\non-demand purchasing. We show that the method can provide consumers with the\r\nflexibility and cost-benefits afforded by cloud computing, and can benefit the\r\nprovider by improving server utilisation and therefore reducing energy costs.\r\nFurthermore, we show how provision-point contracts, often used by deal-of-the-day\r\nwebsites such as Groupon, can further improve the method, making it even more\r\nattractive to the provider....
The aim of this paper is to propose the use of a cloud-based integrity management service coupled with a\r\ntrustworthy client component ââ?¬â?? in the form of the Trust Extension Device (TED) platform ââ?¬â?? as a means to to increase the\r\nquality of the security evaluation of a client. Thus, in addition to performing authentication of the client (e.g. as part of\r\nSingle Sign-On), the Identity Provider asks that the integrity of the client platform be computed and then be\r\nevaluated by a trustworthy and independent Cloud-based Integrity Measurement Service (cIMS). The TED platform has\r\nbeen previously developed based on the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), and allows the integrity measurement of\r\nthe client environment to be conducted and reported in a secure manner. Within the SSO flow, the portable TED\r\ndevice performs an integrity measurement of the client platform, and sends an integrity report to the cIMS as part of\r\nthe client authentication process. The cIMS validates the measurements performed by the TED device, and reports a\r\ntrust score to the Identity Provider (IdP). The IdP takes into account the reported trust score when the IdP computes\r\nand issues a Level of Assurance (LOA) value to the client platform. In this way the Service Provider obtains a greater\r\ndegree of assurance that the clientââ?¬â?¢s computing environment is relatively free of unrecognized and/or unauthorized\r\ncomponents....
Loading....