Modeling and Security in Cloud Ecosystems

Abstract

Clouds do not work in isolation but interact with other clouds and with a variety of systems either developed by the same provider or by external entities with the purpose to interact with them; forming then an ecosystem. A software ecosystem is a collection of software systems that have been developed to coexist and evolve together. The stakeholders of such a system need a variety of models to give them a perspective of the possibilities of the system, to evaluate specific quality attributes, and to extend the system. A powerful representation when building or using software ecosystems is the use of architectural models, which describe the structural aspects of such a system. These models have value for security and compliance, are useful to build new systems, can be used to define service contracts, find where quality factors can be monitored, and to plan further expansion. We have described a cloud ecosystem in the form of a pattern diagram where its components are patterns and reference architectures. A pattern is an encapsulated solution to a recurrent problem. We have recently expanded these models to cover fog systems and containers. Fog Computing is a highly-virtualized platform that provides compute, storage, and networking services between end devices and Cloud Computing Data Centers; a Software Container provides an execution environment for applications sharing a host operating system, binaries, and libraries with other containers. We intend to use this architecture to answer a variety of questions about the security of this system as well as a reference to design interacting combinations of heterogeneous components. We defined a metamodel to relate security concepts which is being expanded.

A secure fog‐based platform for SCADA‐based IoT critical infrastructure

“…Dsouza et al proposed a policy‐driven security management approach for fog resources including policy analysis and its integration with the fog paradigm. However, the approach fails to consider rights inheritance or propagation of rights in the ecosystem . Stojmenovic and Wen presented a survey of fog applications and the associated security challenges.…”

“…However, the approach fails to consider rights inheritance or propagation of rights in the ecosystem. 47,48 Stojmenovic and Wen 48 presented a survey of fog applications and the associated security challenges. In particular, the authors analyzed man-in-the-middle attacks in the context of fog computing, where fog devices can be compromised or replaced by fake ones.…”

A Systematic Mapping Study on Requirements Engineering in Software Ecosystems

“…Security and privacy can also be evaluated using the architectural models that are represented in the form of pattern diagrams including software patterns (Fernandez et al, 2015;Fernandez et al, 2016). Pattern models are especially useful for handling the security of complex systems like SECOs.…”

Context Analysis of Cloud Computing Systems Using a Pattern-Based Approach

“…Basically, "a pattern is a solution to a recurring problem in a specific context" [13]. Patterns are used in the following domains: software requirements (e.g., [14]), software design (e.g., [15,16]), information security engineering (e.g., [17,18]), requirements engineering (e.g., [19][20][21]), test patterns (e.g., [22]), context analysis (e.g., [23]) and more.…”

“…Fernandez et al [13] provided a unified way of representing all the components of a cloud ecosystem as well as security aspects. Our pattern supports the specification of the indirect and direct environments of a cloud system as well as its stakeholders in addition to the cloud system itself.…”