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Security-oriented cloud computing platform for critical infrastructureshttp://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/7980/ Article LJMU has developed LJMU Research Online for users to access the research output of the University more effectively. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LJMU Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain.The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of the record. Please see the repository URL above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. Abstract -The rise of virtualisation and cloud computing is one of the most significant features of computing in the last 10 years. However, despite its popularity, there are still a number of technical barriers that prevent it from becoming the truly ubiquitous service it has the potential to be. Central to this are the issues of data security and the lack of trust that users have in relying on cloud services to provide the foundation of their IT infrastructure. This is a highly complex issue, which covers multiple inter-related factors such as platform integrity, robust service guarantees, data and network security, and many others that have yet to be overcome in a meaningful way. This paper presents a concept for an innovative integrated platform to reinforce the integrity and security of cloud services and we apply this in the context of Critical Infrastructures to identify the core requirements, components and features of this infrastructure.

Small and Medium size Enterprises (SME) are considered as a backbone of many developing and developed economies of the world; they are the driving force to any major economy across the globe. Through Cloud Computing firms outsource their entire information technology (IT) process while concentrating more on their core business. It allows businesses to cut down heavy cost incurred over IT infrastructure without losing focus on customer needs. However, Cloud industry to an extent has struggled to grow among SMEs due to the reluctance and concerns expressed by them. Throughout the course of this study several interviews were conducted and the literature was reviewed to understand how cloud providers offer services and what challenges SMEs are facing. The study identified issues like cloud knowledge, interoperability, security and contractual concerns to be hindering SMEs adoption of cloud services. From the interviews common practices followed by cloud vendors and what concerns SMEs have were identified as a basis for a cloud framework which will bridge gaps between cloud vendors and SMEs. A stepwise framework for cloud adoption is formulated which identifies and provides recommendation to four most predominant challenges which are hurting cloud industry and taking SMEs away from cloud computing, as well as guide SMEs aiding in successful cloud adoption. Moreover, this framework streamlines the cloud adoption process for SMEs by removing ambiguity in regards to fundamentals associated with their organisation and cloud adoption process.

Abstract. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) offer an increasingly attractive method of data gathering in distributed system architectures and dynamic access via wireless connectivity. Wireless sensor networks have physical and resource limitations, this leads to increased complexity for application developers and often results in applications that are closely coupled with network protocols. In this paper, a data aggregation framework using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) on wireless sensor networks is presented. The framework works as a middleware for aggregating data measured by a number of nodes within a network. The aim of the study is to assess the suitability of the protocol in such environments where resources are limited compared to traditional networks.