Biblio
With the rapid progression of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and especially of Internet of Things (IoT), the conventional electrical grid is transformed into a new intelligent paradigm, known as Smart Grid (SG). SG provides significant benefits both for utility companies and energy consumers such as the two-way communication (both electricity and information), distributed generation, remote monitoring, self-healing and pervasive control. However, at the same time, this dependence introduces new security challenges, since SG inherits the vulnerabilities of multiple heterogeneous, co-existing legacy and smart technologies, such as IoT and Industrial Control Systems (ICS). An effective countermeasure against the various cyberthreats in SG is the Intrusion Detection System (IDS), informing the operator timely about the possible cyberattacks and anomalies. In this paper, we provide an anomaly-based IDS especially designed for SG utilising operational data from a real power plant. In particular, many machine learning and deep learning models were deployed, introducing novel parameters and feature representations in a comparative study. The evaluation analysis demonstrated the efficacy of the proposed IDS and the improvement due to the suggested complex data representation.
Continued advances in IoT technology have prompted new investigation into its usage for military operations, both to augment and complement existing military sensing assets and support next-generation artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. Under the emerging Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) paradigm, a multitude of operational conditions (e.g., diverse asset ownership, degraded networking infrastructure, adversary activities) necessitate the development of novel security techniques, centered on establishment of trust for individual assets and supporting resilience of broader systems. To advance current IoBT efforts, a set of research directions are proposed that aim to fundamentally address the issues of trust and trustworthiness in contested battlefield environments, building on prior research in the cybersecurity domain. These research directions focus on two themes: (1) Supporting trust assessment for known/unknown IoT assets; (2) Ensuring continued trust of known IoBT assets and systems.
Military technology is ever-evolving to increase the safety and security of soldiers on the field while integrating Internet-of-Things solutions to improve operational efficiency in mission oriented tasks in the battlefield. Centralized communication technology is the traditional network model used for battlefields and is vulnerable to denial of service attacks, therefore suffers performance hazards. They also lead to a central point of failure, due to which, a flexible model that is mobile, resilient, and effective for different scenarios must be proposed. Blockchain offers a distributed platform that allows multiple nodes to update a distributed ledger in a tamper-resistant manner. The decentralized nature of this system suggests that it can be an effective tool for battlefields in securing data communication among Internet-of-Battlefield Things (IoBT). In this paper, we integrate a permissioned blockchain, namely Hyperledger Sawtooth, in IoBT context and evaluate its performance with the goal of determining whether it has the potential to serve the performance needs of IoBT environment. Using different testing parameters, the metric data would help in suggesting the best parameter set, network configuration and blockchain usability views in IoBT context. We show that a blockchain-integrated IoBT platform has heavy dependency on the characteristics of the underlying network such as topology, link bandwidth, jitter, and other communication configurations, that can be tuned up to achieve optimal performance.
Continued advances in IoT technology have prompted new investigation into its usage for military operations, both to augment and complement existing military sensing assets and support next-generation artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. Under the emerging Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) paradigm, current operational conditions necessitate the development of novel security techniques, centered on establishment of trust for individual assets and supporting resilience of broader systems. To advance current IoBT efforts, a collection of prior-developed cybersecurity techniques is reviewed for applicability to conditions presented by IoBT operational environments (e.g., diverse asset ownership, degraded networking infrastructure, adversary activities) through use of supporting case study examples. The research techniques covered focus on two themes: (1) Supporting trust assessment for known/unknown IoT assets; (2) ensuring continued trust of known IoT assets and IoBT systems.
This Innovative Practice Work in Progress paper makes the case for using concept inventories in cybersecurity education and presents an example of the development of a concept inventory in the field of secure programming. The secure programming concept inventory is being developed by a team of researchers from four universities. We used a Delphi study to define the content area to be covered by the concept inventory. Participants in the Delphi study included ten experts from academia, government, and industry. Based on the results, we constructed a concept map of secure programming concepts. We then compared this concept map to the Joint Task Force on Cybersecurity Education Curriculum 2017 guidelines to ensure complete coverage of secure programming concepts. Our mapping indicates a substantial match between the concept map and those guidelines.
Healthcare is a vital component of every nation's critical infrastructure, yet it is one of the most vulnerable sector for cyber-attacks. To enforce the knowledge on information security processes and data protection procedures, educational and training schemes should be establishedfor information technology (IT) staff working in healthcare settings. However, only training IT staff is not enough, as many of cybersecurity threats are caused by human errors or lack of awareness. Current awareness and training schemes are often implemented in silos, concentrating on one aspect of cybersecurity at a time. Proactive Resilience Educational Framework (Prosilience EF) provides a holistic cyber resilience and security framework for developing and delivering a multilateral educational and training scheme based on a proactive approach to cybersecurity. The framework is built on the principle that education and training must be interactive, guided, meaningful and directly relevant to the user' operational environment. The framework addresses capacity mapping, cyber resilience level measuring, utilizing available and mapping missing resources, adaptive learning technologies and dynamic content delivery. Prosilience EF launches an iterative process of awareness and training development with relevant stakeholders (end users - hospitals, healthcare authorities, cybersecurity training providers, industry members), evaluating the framework via joint exercises/workshops andfurther developing the framework.
This Innovate Practice Work in Progress paper is about education on Cybersecurity, which is essential in training of innovative talents in the era of the Internet. Besides knowledge and skills, it is important as well to enhance the students' awareness of cybersecurity in daily life. Considering that contactless smart cards are common and widely used in various areas, one basic and two advanced contactless smart card experiments were designed innovatively and assigned to junior students in 3-people groups in an introductory cybersecurity summer course. The experimental principles, facilities, contents and arrangement are introduced successively. Classroom tests were managed before and after the experiments, and a box and whisker plot is used to describe the distributions of the scores in both tests. The experimental output and student feedback implied the learning objectives were achieved through the problem-based, active and group learning experience during the experiments.
The search for alternative delivery modes to teaching has been one of the pressing concerns of numerous educational institutions. One key innovation to improve teaching and learning is e-learning which has undergone enormous improvements. From its focus on text-based environment, it has evolved into Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) which provide more stimulating and immersive experiences among learners and educators. An example of VLEs is the virtual world which is an emerging educational platform among universities worldwide. One very interesting topic that can be taught using the virtual world is cybersecurity. Simulating cybersecurity in the virtual world may give a realistic experience to students which can be hardly achieved by classroom teaching. To date, there are quite a number of studies focused on cybersecurity awareness and cybersecurity behavior. But none has focused looking into the effect of digital simulation in the virtual world, as a new educational platform, in the cybersecurity attitude of the students. It is in this regard that this study has been conducted by designing simulation in the virtual world lessons that teaches the five aspects of cybersecurity namely; malware, phishing, social engineering, password usage and online scam, which are the most common cybersecurity issues. The study sought to examine the effect of this digital simulation design in the cybersecurity knowledge and attitude of the students. The result of the study ascertains that students exposed under simulation in the virtual world have a greater positive change in cybersecurity knowledge and attitude than their counterparts.
IT technology is a vital part of our everyday life and society. Additionally, as it is present in strategic domains like the military, healthcare or critical infrastructure, the aspect of protection, i.e. cybersecurity is of utmost importance. In recent years, the demand for cybersecurity experts is exponentially rising. Additionally, the field of cybersecurity is very much interdisciplinary and therefore requires a broad set of skills. Renowned organisations as ACM or IEEE have recognized the importance of cybersecurity experts and proposed guidelines for higher education training of such professionals. This paper presents an overview of a cybersecurity education model from the Information Systems and Information Technology perspective together with a good example and experience of the University of Maribor. The presented education model is shaped according to the guidelines by the Joint Task Force on Cybersecurity Education and the expectations of the Slovene industry regarding the knowledge and skills their future employees should possess.
In this paper, we propose a cybersecurity exercise system in a virtual computer environment. The human resource development for security fields is an urgent issue because of the threat of cyber-attacks, recently, is increasing, many incidents occurring, but there is a not enough security personnel to respond. Some universities and companies are conducting education using a commercial training system on the market. However, built and operates the training system is expensive, therefore difficult to use in higher education institutions and SMEs. However, to build and operates, the training system needs high cost, thus difficult to use in higher education institutions and SMEs. For this reason, we developed the CyExec: a cybersecurity exercise system consisting of a virtual computer environment using VirtualBox and Docker. We also implemented the WebGoat that is an OSS vulnerability diagnosis and learning program on the CyExec and developed an attack and defense exercise program.
The need for cybersecurity knowledge and skills is constantly growing as our lives become more integrated with the digital world. In order to meet this demand, educational institutions must continue to innovate within the field of cybersecurity education and make this educational process as effective and efficient as possible. We seek to accomplish this goal by taking an existing cybersecurity educational technology and adding automated grading and assessment functionality to it. This will reduce costs and maximize scalability by reducing or even eliminating the need for human graders.
The spotlight is on cybersecurity education programs to develop a qualified cybersecurity workforce to meet the demand of the professional field. The ACM CCECC (Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges) is leading the creation of a set of guidelines for associate degree cybersecurity programs called Cyber2yr, formerly known as CSEC2Y. A task force of community college educators have created a student competency focused curriculum that will serve as a global cybersecurity guide for applied (AAS) and transfer (AS) degree programs to develop a knowledgeable and capable associate level cybersecurity workforce. Based on the importance of the Cyber2yr work; ABET a nonprofit, non-governmental agency that accredits computing programs has created accreditation criteria for two-year cybersecurity programs.
Industrial Control systems traditionally achieved security by using proprietary protocols to communicate in an isolated environment from the outside. This paradigm is changed with the advent of the Industrial Internet of Things that foresees flexible and interconnected systems. In this contribution, a device acting as a connection between the operational technology network and information technology network is proposed. The device is an intrusion detection system related to legacy systems that is able to collect and reporting data to and from industrial IoT devices. It is based on the common signature based intrusion detection system developed in the information technology domain, however, to cope with the constraints of the operation technology domain, it exploits anomaly based features. Specifically, it is able to analyze the traffic on the network at application layer by mean of deep packet inspection, parsing the information carried by the proprietary protocols. At a later stage, it collect and aggregate data from and to IoT domain. A simple set up is considered to prove the effectiveness of the approach.
With the construction and implementation of the government information resources sharing mechanism, the protection of citizens' privacy has become a vital issue for government departments and the public. This paper discusses the risk of citizens' privacy disclosure related to data sharing among government departments, and analyzes the current major privacy protection models for data sharing. Aiming at the issues of low efficiency and low reliability in existing e-government applications, a statistical data sharing framework among governmental departments based on local differential privacy and blockchain is established, and its applicability and advantages are illustrated through example analysis. The characteristics of the private blockchain enhance the security, credibility and responsiveness of information sharing between departments. Local differential privacy provides better usability and security for sharing statistics. It not only keeps statistics available, but also protects the privacy of citizens.
Cryptographic protocols are the basis for the security of any protected system, including the electronic voting system. One of the most effective ways to analyze protocol security is to use verifiers. In this paper, the formal verifier SPIN was used to analyze the security of the cryptographic protocol for e-voting, which is based on model checking using linear temporal logic (LTL). The cryptographic protocol of electronic voting is described. The main structural units of the Promela language used for simulation in the SPIN verifier are described. The model of the electronic voting protocol in the language Promela is given. The interacting parties, transferred data, the order of the messages transmitted between the parties are described. Security of the cryptographic protocol using the SPIN tool is verified. The simulation of the protocol with active intruder using the man in the middle attack (MITM) to substitute data is made. In the simulation results it is established that the protocol correctly handles the case of an active attack on the parties' authentication.
This paper aims to discover the characteristics of acceptance of mobile government systems by elderly. Several initiatives and projects offer various governmental services for them, like information sharing, alerting and mHealth services. All of them carry important benefits for this user group, but these can only be utilized if the user acceptance is at a certain level. This is a requirement in order for the users to perceive the services as a benefit and not as hindrance. The key aspects for high acceptance are usability and user-friendliness, which will lead to successful-government systems designed for the target group. We have applied a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods including an m-Government prototype to explore the key acceptance factors. Research approach utilizes the IGUAN framework, which is a user-driven method. We collected and analysed data guided by IGUAN framework about the acceptance of e-government services by elderly. The target group was recruited from Germany and Hungary. Our findings draw the attention to perceived security and perceived usability of an application; these are decisive factors for this target group.
{Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have rationalized government services into a more efficient and transparent government. However, a large part of the government services remained constant in the manual process due to the high cost of ICT. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of e-governance and ICT in the legislative management of municipalities in the Philippines. This study adopted the phases of Princeton Project Management Methodology (PPMM) as the approach in the development of LeMTrac. This paper utilized the developmental- quantitative research design involving two (2) sets of respondents, which are the end-users and IT experts. Majority of the respondents perceived that the system as "highly acceptable" with an average Likert score of 4.72 for the ISO 9126 Software quality metric Usability. The findings also reveal that the integration of LeMTrac within the Sangguniang Bayan (SB) Office in the Municipal Local Government Units (LGU) of Nabua and Bula, Camarines Sur provided better accessibility, security, and management of documents.
The e-government concept and healthcare have usually been studied separately. Even when and where both e-government and healthcare systems were combined in a study, the roles of e-government in healthcare have not been examined. As a result., the complementarity of the systems poses potential challenges. The interpretive approach was applied in this study. Existing materials in the areas of healthcare and e-government were used as data from a qualitative method viewpoint. Dimension of change from the perspective of the structuration theory was employed to guide the data analysis. From the analysis., six factors were found to be the main roles of e-government in the implementation and application of e-health in the delivering of healthcare services. An understanding of the roles of e-government promotes complementarity., which enhances the healthcare service delivery to the community.
"Good Governance" - may it be corporate or governmental, is a badly needed focus area in the world today where the companies and governments are struggling to survive the political and economical turmoil around the globe. All governments around the world have a tendency of expanding the size of their government, but eventually they would be forced to think reducing the size by incorporating information technology as a way to provide services to the citizens effectively and efficiently. Hence our attempt is to offer a complete solution from birth of a citizen till death encompassing all the necessary services related to the well being of a person living in a society. Our research and analysis would explore the pros and cons of using IT as a solution to our problems and ways to implement them for a best outcome in e-Governance occasionally comparing with the present scenario when relevant.
In our daily lives, the advances of new technology can be used to sustain the development of people across the globe. Particularly, e-government can be the dynamo of the development for the people. The development of technology and the rapid growth in the use of internet creates a big challenge in the administration in both the public and the private sector. E-government is a vital accomplishment, whereas the security is the main downside which occurs in each e-government process. E-government has to be secure as technology grows and the users have to follow the procedures to make their own transactions safe. This paper tackles the challenges and obstacles to enhance the security of information in e-government. Hence to achieve security data hiding techniques are found to be trustworthy. Reversible data hiding (RDH) is an emerging technique which helps in retaining the quality of the cover image. Hence it is preferred over the traditional data hiding techniques. Modification in the existing algorithm is performed for image encryption scheme and data hiding scheme in order to improve the results. To achieve this secret data is split into 20 parts and data concealing is performed on each part. The data hiding procedure includes embedding of data into least significant nibble of the cover image. The bits are further equally distributed in the cover image to obtain the key security parameters. Hence the obtained results validate that the proposed scheme is better than the existing schemes.
In the context of the rapid technological progress, the cyber-threats become a serious challenge that requires immediate and continuous action. As cybercrime poses a permanent and increasing threat, governments, corporate and individual users of the cyber-space are constantly struggling to ensure an acceptable level of security over their assets. Maliciousness on the cyber-space spans identity theft, fraud, and system intrusions. This is due to the benefits of cyberspace-low entry barriers, user anonymity, and spatial and temporal separation between users, make it a fertile field for deception and fraud. Numerous, supervised and unsupervised, techniques have been proposed and used to identify fraudulent transactions and activities that deviate from regular patterns of behaviour. For instance, neural networks and genetic algorithms were used to detect credit card fraud in a dataset covering 13 months and 50 million credit card transactions. Unsupervised methods, such as clustering analysis, have been used to identify financial fraud or to filter fake online product reviews and ratings on e-commerce websites. Blockchain technology has demonstrated its feasibility and relevance in e-commerce. Its use is now being extended to new areas, related to electronic government. The technology appears to be the most appropriate in areas that require storage and processing of large amounts of protected data. The question is what can blockchain technology do and not do to fight malicious online activity?