Gabriela Gheorghe

Verifying cloud services: present and future

As cloud-based services gain popularity in both private and enterprise domains, cloud consumers are still lacking in tools to verify that these services work as expected. Such tools should consider properties such as functional correctness, service availability, reliability, performance and security guarantees. In this paper we survey existing work in these areas and identify gaps in existing cloud technology in terms of the verification tools provided to users. We also discuss challenges and new research directions that can help bridge these gaps.

SDN-RADAR: Network troubleshooting combining user experience and SDN capabilities

Software-defined deployments are growing into data center and enterprise network infrastructures. The typical promises of software-defined networks (SDN) are improved time for market, decreased risk and operational costs for services, flexibility and unified management. However, little is known and shared about how to actually manage an SDN network, especially in localising underperforming network paths (what we call “troubleshooting”). We describe a novel approach to ease large network troubleshooting by leveraging SDN features and incorporating distributed monitoring of network traffic. We suggest SDN-RADAR, a tool that can help network administrators understand which is the most likely faulty network link. To the best of our knowledge this is the first troubleshooting solution that combines user-side performance measurements with network data extracted from the SDN controller.

Toward a Characterization of Human Activities using Smart Devices: A Micro/Macro Approach

The emergence of new connected devices has opened up new opportunities and allowed to imagine concepts that bring computer sciences and social sciences closer together. In particular, todays increasingly sophisticated miniature sensors allow to track and understand human activities and behavior with a great precision. Taking different approaches and perspectives, we use in this paper smartwatches and smartglasses to explore these behaviors and show that these objects, considered by many as gadgets, have an important role to play in understanding the lives of individuals. The main objective of this work is to introduce two new scales of activity detection, which lacks a formal and consistent definition in the literature. First, we propose a model that precisely detects and interprets movements made by a person wearing smart devices. Then, we use this model to show different interactions between those micro-activities and bigger chunks of behaviors we call macro-activities. Using a new concept based on 3D visualization, we finally show that combining those two scales and using a limited dataset, it is possible to distinguish between different individuals when they are performing very similar activities. The findings of this study lead the way to enhanced user profiling.

Visual Analytics for Interacting on Cultural Heritage

We present a framework for location-aware digital storytelling with associated tools and techniques to highlight the connection of different stories. The framework is being implemented in a collaborative editing platform that involves a variety of pilot users, sharing their stories about periods and places selected for their relevance to contemporary history. Complementary studies contribute to knowledge on reducing the intergenerational digital divide (The Locale project is funded by a Core grant from the Fonds National de la Recherche (L).).

Heat is in the eye of the beholder: Towards better authenticating on smartglasses

Smart and wearable devices are trendy electronic objects that have become increasingly popular in recent years. Those devices are, by definition, tightly connected with the users personal activities. Authentication is therefore a critical feature for both identifying users and personalizing the services on the device. In particular, the emergence of smartglasses changed the way we thought a wearable could assist users in their daily activities. As designed by commercial providers, smartglasses are sold with a very specific set of interactions capabilities. These capabilities have a strong impact on how comfortably or safely users may authenticate to their smartglasses. For this reason, we investigate in this paper the different authentication methods available for smartphones and we comparatively position the smartglasses in the design space of authentication methods. We propose a new approach based on touch input on an arbitrary surface using thermal camera input. This approach aims to circumvent the lack of touch surface provided by smartglasses, while maintaining an acceptable level of security.

Network troubleshooting with SDN-RADAR

Despite increasing deployment of software-defined networks (SDN), little is yet known about how to actually manage such kind of networks. When service degradation (generically termed here “trouble”) happens, the first step is to localise under-performing network paths (“troubleshooting”). SDN-RADAR gives a novel approach to ease large network troubleshooting by leveraging SDN features and incorporating distributed monitoring of network traffic. The demo shows how the SDN-RADAR tool can help network administrators understand which is the most likely faulty network link.

SPARER: Secure Cloud-Proof Storage for e-Health Scenarios

With the surge of data breaches, practitioner ignorance and unprotected hardware, secure information management in healthcare environments is becoming a challenging problem. In the context of healthcare systems, confidentiality of patient data is of particular sensitivity. For economic reasons, cloud services are spreading, but there is still no clear solution to the problem of truly secure data storage at a remote location. To tackle this issue, we first examine if it is possible to have a secure storage of healthcare data without fully relying on trusted third-parties, and without impeding system usability on the side of the caregivers. The novelty of this approach is that it offers a standard-based deployable solution tailored for healthcare scenarios, using cloud services, but where trust is shifted from the cloud provider to the healthcare institution. This approach is unlike state-of-the-art solutions: there are secure cloud storage solutions that insist on having no knowledge of the stored data, but we discovered that they still require too much trust to manage user credentials, these credentials actually give them access to confidential data. In the paper, we present SPARER as a solution to the secure cloud storage problem and discuss the trade-offs of our approach. Moreover, we look at performance benchmarks that can hint to the feasibility and cost of using off-the-shelf cryptographic tools as building blocks in SPARER.

Towards Reinventing Online Privacy

In this opinion paper, we examine several challenges to privacy online, for both enterprises and individual users. We argue that we have come to a turning point and we need to regain control over how our data is handled even when outside our reach. We give an overview of a set of measures at the intersection of legal and technical domains, to underline that only a combined approach can really put online privacy back in the hands of the users.