Fog Computing: Security issues for Computer Information Systems
Jeevan Gujjula, gujju1j@cmich.edu
BIS 625 Research in Information Systems
College of Business Administration, Department of Business Information Systems
Central Michigan University
Mount Pleasant, Michigan 48858
USA
Keywords:
Fog computing, network security, cloud security, cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoTs), Security and privacy, Network management.
Background:
One of cloud computing's biggest risks arises from its very nature: It allows data to be sent and stored just about anywhere, even divided among locations around the world. While data dispersion helps give cloud computing a cost and performance edge, the downside is that business information can land in storage systems in locales where privacy laws are loose or even nonexistent (Edwards, John, 2009).
Fog computing extends cloud computing by providing virtualized resources and engaged location-based services to the edge of the mobile networks so as to better serve mobile traffics. Fog computing is a lubricant of the combination of cloud computing and mobile applications (Tom H. Luan & Longxiang Gao, 2016).
Overview of Fog computing:
Definition: As a new paradigm of computing, fog computing is still not a full-fledged concept in the community. (Shanhe Yi 2015)In the position paper, fog computing is considered as an extension of the cloud computing to the edge of the network, which is a highly virtualized platform of resource pool that provides computation, storage, and networking services to nearby end users. In the perspective of work, they have defined fog computing as “a scenario where a huge number of heterogeneous (wireless and sometimes autonomous) ubiquitous and decentralized devices communicate and potentially cooperate among them and with the network to perform storage and processing tasks without the intervention of third parties. These tasks can be for supporting basic network functions or new services and applications that run in a sandboxed environment. Users leasing part of their devices to host these services get incentives for doing so.” (Shanhe Yi 2015)
Application Scenarios:
Authentication: Authentication is an important issue for the security of fog computing since services are offered to massive-scale end users by front fog nodes. The main security issues of fog computing as the authentication at different levels of fog nodes. (Wen 2014)
Network Security: Due to the predominance of wireless in fog networking, wireless network security is big concern to fog networking. Example attacks are jamming attacks, sniffer attacks, etc.(Wen 2014) Those attacks can be addressed in the research domain of wireless network, which is not in the scope of this survey.(Tom H. Luan∗ 2016)
Security and privacy issues: Security and privacy should be addressed in every layer in designing fog computing system. Here we ask ourselves “what is new about fog computing security and privacy?”. Due to the characteristics of fog computing, we may need future work to tackle those problems.(Tom H. Luan∗ 2016)
In cloud computing deployment, data centers are usually owned by cloud service providers. However, fog service providers can be different parties due to different deployment choices: (1) Internet service providers or wireless carriers, who have control of home gateways or cellular base stations, may build fog with their existing infrastructures. (2) Cloud service providers, who want to expand their cloud services to the edge of the network, may also build fog infrastructures. (3) End users, who own a local private cloud and want to reduce the cost of ownership, would like to turn the local private cloud into fog and lease spare resources on the local private cloud. This flexibility complicates the trust situation of fog. (Flavio Bonomi 2012).
Data Privacy: To protect data privacy, sensitive data from end users have to be encrypted before outsourced to the fog node, making effective data utilization services challenging. One of the most important services is keyword search, i.e., keyword search among encrypted data files.(Shanhe Yi 2015)
Challenges: There are many open problems that will have to be addressed to make the fog a reality. It is necessary to clearly identify these problems so future research works can focus on them. The challenges come from how to design interplay between fog and cloud to accommodate different workloads(Rodrigo Romana 2016) Major challenge ahead is security. for fog devices hosting applications. Other challenges for the fog to become a reality are compute/ storage limitation, data security, standardization of network protocols and programmability.(Vaquero and Rodero-Merino 2014)
Research questions and objectives:
1. What are the opportunities and challenges that would overcome the privacy and security issues in Will cloud computing be efficient data center system if Fog computing evolves rapidly in the coming future?
2. How far does data confidentiality is maintained through fog computing?
3. What are the advances in security and privacy issues of fog computing?
Objectives:
1. The main objective of this research is to study and overcome the challenges faced with security issues in Cloud computing.
2. Applied techniques of fog computing to overcome security and privacy issues through Internet.
3. Fog computing advantages for services in several domains, and provide the analysis of security issues in current paradigm.
Methods:
Research design: The research methodology includes literature review, conducting surveys/ interviews, case studies. First we study the privacy issues and security threats faced by current computing information systems and try to analyze the applied techniques to overcome the security issues in cloud computing. Relevant questionnaires are prepared and published in the internet as a survey. A case study is done by comparing cloud computing with fog computing overcoming the security issues.
Participants: As the research involves network security implementation, the ongoing technologies and Cloud computing service providers would be easy to take survey for my research.
Techniques: The applied techniques involved in the research process is all about how to make data secure and authenticated through cloud computing so as to overcome privacy and security issues. Based on this, an analysis can be drawn out how information systems is affected with out proper implementation of security applications through the internet.
Timescale:
Resources:
As my research methodology is currently on the Fog computing with applied techniques on security issues through Cloud computing, I need to have documentation and focus current technologies that implement fog computing.
References:
Edwards, J. (2009). "Cutting Through the Fog Of Cloud Security." Computerworld 43(8): 26-29.
Flavio Bonomi, R. M., Jiang Zhu, Sateesh Addepalli (2012). "Fog Computing and Its Role in the Internet of Things."
Rodrigo Romana, J. L., Masahiro Mambob (2016). "Mobile Edge Computing, Fog et al.: A Survey and Analysis of Security Threats and Challenges."
Shanhe Yi, C. L., Qun Li (2015). "A survey of Fog Computing: Concepts, Applications and Issues.".
Shanhe Yi, Z. Q., and Qun Li (2015). "Security and Privacy issues of Fog Computing: A survey."
Tom H. Luan∗, L. G., Zhi Li‡, Yang Xiang∗, Guiyi We†, and Limin Sun‡ (2016). "Fog Computing: Paradigm, Protocol and Security Issues.".
Vaquero, L. M. and L. Rodero-Merino (2014). "Finding your Way in the Fog: Towards a Comprehensive Definition of Fog Computing." SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 44(5): 27-32.
Wen, I. S. S. (2014). "The Fog computing Paradigm : Scenarios and Security Issues."