Botnets have carved a niche in contemporary networking and cybersecurity due to the impact of their operations. The botnet threat continues to evolve and adapt to countermeasures as the security landscape continues to shift. As research efforts attempt to seek a deeper and robust understanding of the nature of the threat for more effective solutions, it becomes necessary to again traverse the threat landscape, and consolidate what is known so far about botnets, that future research directions could be more easily visualised. This research uses the general exploratory approach of the qualitative methodology to survey the current botnet threat landscape: Covering the typology of botnets and their owners, the structure and lifecycle of botnets, botnet attack modes and control architectures, existing countermeasure solutions and limitations, as well as the prospects of a botnet threat. The product is a consolidation of knowledge pertaining the nature of the botnet threat; which also informs future research directions into aspects of the threat landscape where work still needs to be done.

Cloud computing, and the technology of virtualization which drives its foundations, lead the pack of Information Technology (IT) solutions for business that have emerged and kept transforming businesses in recent years. While in acknowledgement of the fact that numerous researches have emerged in recent times on the concepts of virtualization and cloud computing, trying to address issues relating to management, complexity, operability, service delivery, security, amongst others, very little to no effort has been made to study how these technologies impact the dynamic business environment of the 21 st century and the benefits they could hold for businesses of the digital age. In light of this, this paper gives a theoretical review of the business environment as it was before and shortly after the advent of IT, in such a way that novices as well as experts in business and IT would be able to identify with and understand the interactions that have always existed amongst these industries. It further goes on to provide a detailed exposé on cloud computing and virtualization as it affects the business environment of the 21 st century, right from its inception and origins, to survey its history, basic concepts, current trends, modes of deployment and use, as well as the benefits they provide for businesses in our world. It brings in some proven industry perspectives and opinions and presents new insights into what the future has to offer with these twin technologies for both the worlds of business and IT.

Cloud computing, the technology that makes it possible for computing resources to be provisioned to clients / subscribers over long distances, as well as its component technologyvirtualization, which makes it possible for multiple guest systems to co-reside on a single host machine and share the computing resources of the host, have both become very popular technologies that have witnessed giant improvements in the 21 st century. This is a review paper that presents an overview of the technologies of virtualization and cloud computing, tracing their history and evolution down a timeline to what they have today, and providing pointers to prospects of future advancements to virtualization and cloud computing.

No abstract

No abstract