Antonio Celesti

Security and Cloud Computing: InterCloud Identity Management Infrastructure

Cloud Computing is becoming one of the most important topics in the IT world. Several challenges are being raised from the adoption of this computational paradigm including security, privacy, and federation. This paper aims to introduce new concepts in cloud computing and security, focusing on heterogeneous and federated scenarios. We present a reference architecture able to address the Identity Management (IdM) problem in the InterCloud context and show how it can be successfully applied to manage the authentication needed among clouds for the federation establishment.

Three-Phase Cross-Cloud Federation Model: The Cloud SSO Authentication

Cloud federation aims to cost-effective assets and resources optimization among heterogeneous environments where clouds can cooperate together with the goal of obtaining unbounded computation resources, hence new business opportunities. This paper describes an architecture for the federation establishment, where clouds that need external resources ask to federated clouds the renting of extra physical resources. Our architecture introduces a new module named Cross-Cloud Federation Manager including three agents (Discovery, Match-making and Authentication). In this work, we specifically focus on the authentication agent, which is responsible for a secure federation. To address such problem we propose a technical solution based on the IdP/SP model along with the SAML technology.

Adding long-term availability, obfuscation, and encryption to multi-cloud storage systems

Nowadays, storage services offer a new way for Cloud providers to do business. This new trend is proved by the number of Cloud storage providers that are continuously appearing on the market. By now, using Cloud storage services is becoming a common practice for end-users. However, the current Cloud storage providers do not offer any guarantees regarding long-term availability and privacy. In fact, data stored in the Cloud could be locked-in, lost, or violated in terms of privacy. In this work, we present an innovative system that on one hand allows end-users to simultaneously rely on different Cloud storage providers in a transparent way and on the other hand to enforce long-term availability, obfuscation, and encryption. Our system is highly reliable, in fact, if a provider is not temporarily or permanently available, end-users continue accessing their data in a secure way. In addition, only the end-users have the full control of the overall security of their data and no sensitive information are disclosed to Cloud storage providers. Several experiments allow us to discuss the performance of our system compared against existing solutions.

AllJoyn Lambda: An architecture for the management of smart environments in IoT

The increasing number of everyday embedded devices that are interconnected over the Internet leads to the need of new software solutions for managing them in an efficient, scalable, and smart way. In addition, such devices produce a huge amount of information, causing the well known Big Data problem, that need to be stored and processed. This emerging scenario, known as Internet of Things (IoT), raises two main challenges: large-scale smart environments management and Big Data storage/analytics. In this paper, we address both challenges, proposing AllJoyn Lambda, a software solution integrating AllJoyn in the Lambda architecture used for Big Data storage and analytics. In order, to describe how the architecture works, a software prototype integrating the AllJoyn system with MongoDB and Storm is presented and tested, analyzing a “smart home” case of study. Finally, we will focus on how can be possible to manage embedded devices in a smart fashion processing both batch and real-time data.

Virtual machine provisioning through satellite communications in federated Cloud environments

Cloud federation offers plenty of new services and business opportunities. However, many advanced services cannot be implemented in the real Cloud market due to several issues that have not been overcome yet. One of these concerns is the transfer of huge amount of data among federated Clouds. This paper aims to overcome such a limitation proposing an approach based on satellite communications. By comparing performance in data delivery on the Internet and satellite systems, it is evident that satellite technologies are enough ripe to be competitive against systems with a wired infrastructure. Thus, we propose to make use of satellite transmission to implement fast delivery of huge amount of data. Through the discussion of a use case, where a WEB TV company offers a streaming service, we show how to practically apply the proposed strategy in a real scenario, specifying the involvement of Cloud providers, Cloud users, satellite companies and end-user clients.

Characterizing Cloud Federation in IoT

The advent of both Cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the way of conceiving information and communication systems. Generally, we talk about IoT Cloud to indicate a new type of distributed system consisting of a set of smart devices interconnected with a remote Cloud infrastructure, platform, or software through the Internet and able to provide IoT as a Service (IoTaaS). In this paper, we discuss the near future evolution of IoT Clouds towards federated ecosystems, where IoT providers cooperate to offer more flexible services. Moreover, we present a general three-layer IoT Cloud Federation architecture, highlighting new business opportunities and challenges.

SE CLEVER: A secure message oriented Middleware for Cloud federation

In this paper, we address several critical security issues that bottle up the wide adoption of the Cloud Computing technology. In the last years the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has identified many security issues that should be considered during the design of Cloud systems. We experienced them developing the Security-Enhanced (SE) CLEVER, the secure release of CLEVER, a Message Oriented Middleware for Cloud computing based on the well-known XMPP protocol. SE CLEVER provides a secure inter-module and inter-Cloud communication system useful for managing Federated environments. The secure communication system of SE CLEVER was designed leveraging the XMPP flexibility. The experimental results show how the secure capabilities introduced in SE CLEVER do not affect the overall performances of the middleware.

Exploring Container Virtualization in IoT Clouds

The advent of both Cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the way of conceiving information and communication systems. Generally, we talk about IoT Cloud to indicate a new type of distributed system consisting of a set of smart objects, e.g., single board computers running Linux- based operating systems, interconnected with a remote Cloud infrastructure, platform, or software through the Internet and able to provide IoT as a Service (IoTaaS). In this context, container-based virtualization is a lightweight alternative to the hypervisor-based approach that can be adopted on smart objects, for enhancing the IoT Cloud service provisioning. In particular, considering different IoT application scenarios, container-based virtualization allows IoT Cloud providers to deploy and customize in a flexible fashion pieces of software on smart objects. In this paper, we explore the container-based virtualization on smart objects in the perspective of a IoT Cloud scenarios analyzing its advantages and performances.

Towards energy management in Cloud federation

Nowadays, the increasing interest in Cloud computing is motivated by the possibility to promote a new economy of scale in different contexts. In addition, the emerging concept of Cloud federation allows providers to optimize the utilization of their resources establishing business partnerships. In this scenario, the massive exploitation of ICT solutions is increasing the energy consumption of providers, thus many researchers are currently investigating new energy management strategies. Nevertheless, balancing Quality of Service (QoS) with both energy sustainability and cost saving concepts is not trivial at all. The growing interest in this area has been highlighted by the increasing number of contributions that are appearing in literature. Currently, most of energy management strategies are specifically focused on independent Cloud providers, others are beginning to look at Cloud federation. In this paper, we present a survey that helps researchers to identify the future trends of energy management in Cloud federation. In particular, we select the major contributions dealing with energy sustainability and cost-saving strategies aimed at Cloud computing and federation and we present a taxonomy useful to analyze the current state-of-the-art. In the end, we highlight possible directions for future research efforts.

DRACO PaaS: A Distributed Resilient Adaptable Cloud Oriented Platform

This paper focuses on Platform as a Service (PaaS). From the advent of Cloud computing, the latest trend has been to design ad hoc platforms specialized to address given operational scenarios. In this context, the need of an adaptable, fault tolerant and secure cloud platform for the development of specific PaaS is becoming more and more compelling. In this work, we present the Distributed Resilient Adaptable Cloud Oriented (DRACO) PaaS. DRACO PaaS is more than a cloud platorm. In fact, it introduces a new development model for PaaS. More specifically, we will focus on how DRACO PaaS can be adopted for the development of any kind of specialized PaaS.