Research Outputs
Automated and Secure Onboarding for System of Systems
The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly changing the number of connected devices and the way they interact with each other. This increases the need for an automated and secure onboarding procedure for IoT devices, systems and services. Device manufacturers are entering the market with internet connected devices, ranging from small sensors to production devices, which are subject of security threats specific to IoT. The onboarding procedure is required to introduce a new device in a System of Systems (SoS) without compromising the already onboarded devices and the underlying infrastructure. Onboarding is the process of providing access to the network and registering the components for the first time in an IoT/SoS framework, thus creating a chain of trust from the hardware device to its hosted software systems and their provided services. The large number and diversity of device hardware, software systems and running services raises the challenge to establish a generic onboarding procedure. In this paper, we present an automated and secure onboarding procedure for SoS. We have implemented the onboarding procedure in the Eclipse Arrowhead framework. However, it can be easily adapted for other IoT/SoS frameworks that are based on Service-oriented Architecture (SoA) principles. The automated onboarding procedure ensures a secure and trusted communication between the new IoT devices and the Eclipse Arrowhead framework. We show its application in a smart charging use case and perform a security assessment.
Assuring Resilience, Security and Privacy for Flexible Networked Systems and Organisations
Establishing a Chain of Trust in a Sporadically Connected Cyber-Physical System
Drone based applications have progressed significantly in recent years across many industries, including agriculture. This paper proposes a sporadically connected cyber-physical system for assisting winemakers and minimizing the travel time to remote and poorly connected infrastructures. A set of representative diseases and conditions, which will be monitored by land-bound sensors in combination with multispectral images, is identified. To collect accurate data, a trustworthy and secured communication of the drone with the sensors and the base station should be established. We propose to use an Internet of Things framework for establishing a chain of trust by securely onboarding drones, sensors and base station, and providing self-adaptation support for the use case. Furthermore, we perform a security analysis of the use case for identifying potential threats and security controls that should be in place for mitigating them.
Security standard compliance and continuous verification for Industrial Internet of Things
Due to globalization and digitalization of industrial systems, standard compliance is gaining more attention. In order to stay competitive and remain in business, different sectors within industry are required to comply with multiple regulations. Compliance aims to fulfill regulations by including all measures imposed by laws and standards. Every device, application, or service implements several technologies at many levels, and standards support interoperability across them. They help to create global markets for industries and enable networked development in order to be successful and sustainable. This work highlights the importance of standard compliance and continuous verification in industrial Internet of Things and implements an automatic monitoring and standard compliance verification framework. In this work, we focus on security, safety, and organizational aspects of industrial Internet of Things. We identify a number of standards and best practice guidelines, which are used to extract security, safety, and organizational measurable indicator points. In addition, a metric model is provided that forms the basis for the necessary information needed for compliance verification, including requirements, standards, and metrics. Also, we present the prototype of the monitoring and standard compliance verification framework used to show the security compliance of an industrial Internet of Things use case.
Generic Autonomic Management as a Service in a SOA-based Framework for Industry 4.0
Cyber-physical production systems are engineered systems that are built from, and depend upon, the seamless integration of computational algorithms and physical components. In order to make these systems interoperable with each other for addressing Industry 4.0 applications a number of service-oriented architecture frameworks are developed. Such frameworks are composed by a number of services, which are inherently dynamic by nature and thus imply the need for self-adaptation. In this paper we propose generic autonomic management as a service and show how it can be integrated in the Arrowhead framework. We propose generic and reusable interfaces for each phase of the autonomic control loop in order to increase the usability of the service for other frameworks and application systems, while reducing the software engineering effort. To show the utility of our approach in the Arrowhead framework we use a climate control application as a representative example.
The Effect of the 802.11 Power Save Mechanism (PSM) on Energy Efficiency and Performance During System Activity
802.11 WLAN is a popular choice for wireless access on a range of ICT devices. A growing concern is the increased energy usage of ICT, for reasons of cost and environmental protection. The Power Save Mode (PSM) in 802.11 deactivates the wireless network interface during periods of inactivity. However, applications increasingly use push models, and so devices may be active much of the time. We have investigated the effectiveness of PSM, and considered its impact on performance when a device is active. Rather than concentrate on the NIC, we have taken a system-wide approach, to gauge the impact of the PSM from an application perspective. We experimentally evaluated performance at the packet level and system-wide power usage under various offered loads, controlled by packet size and data rate, on our 802.11n test bed. We have measured the system-wide power consumption corresponding to the individual traffic profiles and have derived application-specific effective energy-usage. We have found that in our scenarios, no significant benefit can be gained from using PSM.