Tauber, Markus

2019-01, Ivkić, Igor, Mauthe, Andreas, Tauber, Markus

In times of Industry 4.0 and cyber-physical systems (CPS) providing security is one of the biggest challenges. A cyber attack launched at a CPS poses a huge threat, since a security incident may affect both the cyber and the physical world. Since CPS are very flexible systems, which are capable of adapting to environmental changes, it is important to keep an overview of the resulting costs of providing security. However, research regarding CPS currently focuses more on engineering secure systems and does not satisfactorily provide approaches for evaluating the resulting costs. This paper presents an interaction-based model for evaluating security costs in a CPS. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates in a use case driven study, how this approach could be used to model the resulting costs for guaranteeing security.

2017-12, Bauer, Elisabeth, Schluga, Oliver, Maksuti, Silia, Bicaku, Ani, Hofbauer, David, Ivkić, Igor, Wöhrer, Alexander, Tauber, Markus

The popularity of cloud based Infrastructure-as-a- Service (IaaS) solutions is becoming increasingly popular. However, since IaaS providers and customers interact in a flexible and scalable environment, security remains a serious concern. To handle such security issues, defining a set of security parameters in the service level agreements (SLA) between both, IaaS provider and customer, is of utmost importance. In this paper, the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) guidelines are evaluated to extract a set of security parameters for IaaS. Furthermore, the level of applicability and implementation of this set is used to assess popular industrial and open-source IaaS cloud platforms, respectively VMware and OpenStack. Both platforms provide private clouds, used as backend infrastructures in Industry 4.0 application scenarios. The results serve as initial work to identify a security baseline and research needs for creating secure cloud environments for Industry 4.0.

2017-12, Ivkić, Igor, Wolfauer, Stephan, Oberhofer, Thomas, Tauber, Markus

In a world, as complex and constantly changing as ours cloud computing is a driving force for shaping the IT landscape and changing the way we do business. Current trends show a world of people, things and services all digitally interconnected via the Internet of Things (IoT). This applies in particular to an industrial environment where smart devices and intelligent services pave the way for smart factories and smart businesses. This paper investigates in a use case driven study the potential of making use of smart devices to enable direct, automated and voice-controlled smart businesses. Furthermore, the paper presents an initial investigation on methodologies for measuring costs of cyber security controls for cloud services.

2019, Ivkić, Igor, Pichler, Harald, Zsilak, Mario, Mauthe, Andreas, Tauber, Markus

In Industry 4.0, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are formed by components, which are interconnected with each other over the Internet of Things (IoT). The resulting capabilities of sensing and affecting the physical world offer a vast range of opportunities, yet, at the same time pose new security challenges. To address these challenges there are various IoT Frameworks, which offer solutions for managing and controlling IoT-components and their interactions. In this regard, providing security for an interaction usually requires performing additional security-related tasks (e.g. authorisation, encryption, etc.) to prevent possible security risks. Research currently focuses more on designing and developing these frameworks and does not satisfactorily provide methodologies for evaluating the resulting costs of providing security. In this paper we propose an initial approach for measuring the resulting costs of providing security for interacting IoT-components by using a Security Cost Modell ing Framework. Furthermore, we describe the necessary building blocks of the framework and provide an experimental design showing how it could be used to measure security costs at runtime.

2021-06-30, Sailer, Patrizia, Ivkić, Igor, Tauber, Markus, Mauthe, Andreas, Gouglidis, Antonios

The importance of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications is constantly increasing, especially in the context of Industry 4.0. Architectural decisions are crucial not just for performance, security and resilience reasons but also regarding costs and resource usage. In this paper we analyse two of the fundamental approaches to design control loops (i.e. time-driven and event-driven), show how they can be realised and evaluate their power requirements. Through this the design criteria can be extended also considering the optimization of energy related aspects.

2022-05, Ivkić, Igor, Sailer, Patrizia, Gouglidis, Antonios, Mauthe, Andreas, Tauber, Markus

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are formed through interconnected components capable of computation, communication, sensing and changing the physical world. The development of these systems poses a significant challenge since they have to be designed in a way to ensure cyber-security without impacting their performance. This article presents the Security Cost Modelling Framework (SCMF) and shows supported by an experimental study how it can be used to measure, normalise and aggregate the overall performance of a CPS. Unlike previous studies, our approach uses different metrics to measure the overall performance of a CPS and provides a methodology for normalising the measurement results of different units to a common Cost Unit. Moreover, we show how the Security Costs can be extracted from the overall performance measurements which allows to quantify the overhead imposed by performing security-related tasks. Furthermore, we describe the architecture of our experimental testbed and demonstrate the applicability of SCMF in an experimental study. Our results show that measuring the overall performance and extracting the security costs using SCMF can serve as basis to redesign interactions to achieve the same overall goal at less costs.

2021-08-03, Maksuti, Silia, Bicaku, Ani, Zsilak, Mario, Ivkić, Igor, Péceli, Bálint, Singler, Gábor, Kovács, Kristóf, Tauber, Markus, Delsing, Jerker

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.

2019, Pellegrini, Roland, Ivkić, Igor, Tauber, Markus

Cloud Service Providers deliver their products in form of ”as-a-Service”, which are typically categorized by the level of abstraction. This approach hides the implementation details and shows only functionality to the user. However, the problem is that it is hard to measure the performance of Cloud services, because they behave like black boxes. Especially with Function-as-a-Service it is even more difficult because it completely hides server and infrastructure management from users by design. Cloud Service Prodivers usually restrict the maximum size of code, memory and runtime of Cloud Functions. Nevertheless, users need clarification if more ressources are needed to deliver services in high quality. In this regard, we present the architectural design of a new Function-as-a-Service benchmarking tool, which allows users to evaluate the performance of Cloud Functions. Furthermore, the capabilities of the framework are tested on an isolated platform with a specific workload. The results show that users are able to get insights into Function-as-a-Service environments. This, in turn, allows users to identify factors which may slow down or speed up the performance of Cloud Functions.

2018, Pellegrini, Roland, Ivkić, Igor, Tauber, Markus

In a world, where complexity increases on a daily basis the Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) cloud model seams to take countermeasures. In comparison to other cloud models, the fast evolving FaaS increasingly abstracts the underlying infrastructure and refocuses on the application logic. This trend brings huge benefits in application and performance, but comes with difficulties for benchmarking cloud applications. In this position paper, we present an initial investigation of benchmarking FaaS in close to reality production systems. Furthermore, we outline the architectural design including the necessary benchmarking metrics. We also discuss the possibility of using the proposed framework for identifying security vulnerabilities.