Information Security in the Cloud: Emerging Trends and Challenges

This article explores the evolution of cloud computing, its advantages over traditional on-premises infrastructure, and its impact on information security. The study presents a comprehensive literature review covering various cloud infrastructure offerings and security models. Additionally, it deeply analyzes real-life case studies illustrating successful cloud migrations and highlights common information security threats in current cloud computing. The article concludes by offering recommendations to businesses to protect themselves from cloud data breaches and providing insights into selecting a suitable cloud services provider from an information security perspective.

Cyber Resilience through Real-Time Threat Analysis in Information Security

This paper examines how cybersecurity is developing and how it relates to more conventional information security. Although information security and cyber security are sometimes used synonymously, this study contends that they are not the same. The concept of cyber security is explored, which goes beyond protecting information resources to include a wider variety of assets, including people [1]. Protecting information assets is the main goal of traditional information security, with consideration to the human element and how people fit into the security process. On the other hand, cyber security adds a new level of complexity, as people might unintentionally contribute to or become targets of cyberattacks. This aspect presents moral questions since it is becoming more widely accepted that society has a duty to protect weaker members of society, including children [1]. The study emphasizes how important cyber security is on a larger scale, with many countries creating plans and laws to counteract cyberattacks. Nevertheless, a lot of these sources frequently neglect to define the differences or the relationship between information security and cyber security [1]. The paper focus on differentiating between cybersecurity and information security on a larger scale. The study also highlights other areas of cybersecurity which includes defending people, social norms, and vital infrastructure from threats that arise from online in addition to information and technology protection. It contends that ethical issues and the human factor are becoming more and more important in protecting assets in the digital age, and that cyber security is a paradigm shift in this regard [1].

Research on College Network Information Security Protection in the Digital Economy Era

In the era of the digital economy,the informatization degree of various industries is getting deeper and deeper,and network information security has also come into people’s eyes.Colleges and universities are in the position of training applied talents,because of the needs of teaching and education,as well as the requirements of teaching reform,the information construction of colleges and universities has been gradually improved,but the problem of network information security is also worth causing people to ponder.The low security of the network environment will cause college network information security leaks,and even hackers will attack the official website of the university and leak the personal information of teachers and students.To solve such problems,this paper studies the protection of college network information security against the background of the digital economy era.This paper first analyzes the significance of network information security protection,then points out the current and moral problems,and finally puts forward specific countermeasures,hoping to create a safe learning environment for teachers and students for reference.

Research on Mobile-Based Logistics Information System for Hainan Agricultural Products

The current situation,information technology and problems of logistics for agricultural products were summarized.Some key technologies involved in mobilebased logistics information system for Hainan agricultural products were analyzed,such as information classification and retrieval,user information authentication via QR code,and logistics information services based on WEB and mobile devices.Emphasis was given to study the design idea,content,method for the system.

Incentive mechanism analysis of information security outsourcing based on principal-agent model

In order to solve principal-agent problems caused by interest inconformity and information asymmetry during information security outsourcing, it is necessary to design a reasonable incentive mechanism to promote client enterprises to complete outsourcing service actively. The incentive mechanism model of information security outsourcing is designed based on the principal-agent theory. Through analyzing the factors such as enterprise information assets value, invasion probability, information security environment, the agent cost coefficient and agency risk preference degree how to impact on the incentive mechanism, conclusions show that an enterprise information assets value and invasion probability have a positive influence on the fixed fee and the compensation coefficient; while information security environment, the agent cost coefficient and agency risk preference degree have a negative influence on the compensation coefficient. Therefore, the principal enterprises should reasonably design the fixed fee and the compensation coefficient to encourage information security outsourcing agency enterprises to the full extent.

Green and Near-Infrared Dual-Mode Afterglow of Carbon Dots and Their Applications for Confidential Information Readout

Near-infrared(NIR),particularly NIR-containing dual-/multimode afterglow,is very attractive in many fields of application,but it is still a great challenge to achieve such property of materials. Herein,we report a facile method to prepare green and NIR dual-mode afterglow of carbon dots(CDs) through in situ embedding o-CDs(being prepared from o-phenylenediamine) into cyanuric acid(CA) matrix(named o-CDs@CA). Further studies reveal that the green and NIR afterglows of o-CDs@CA originate from thermal activated delayed fluorescence(TADF) and room temperature phosphorescence(RTP) of o-CDs,respectively. In addition,the formation of covalent bonds between o-CDs and CA,and the presence of multiple fixation and rigid e ects to the triplet states of o-CDs are confirmed to be critical for activating the observed dual-mode afterglow. Due to the shorter lifetime and insensitiveness to human vision of the NIR RTP of o-CDs@CA,it is completely covered by the green TADF during directly observing. The NIR RTP signal,however,can be readily captured if an optical filter(cut-o wavelength of 600 nm) being used. By utilizing these unique features,the applications of o-CDs@CA in anti-counterfeiting and information encryption have been demonstrated with great confidentiality. Finally,the as-developed method was confirmed to be applicable to many other kinds of CDs for achieving or enhancing their afterglow performances.

Comprehensive Information Security Evaluation Model Based on Multi-Level Decomposition Feedback for IoT

The development of the Internet of Things(IoT)calls for a comprehensive in-formation security evaluation framework to quantitatively measure the safety score and risk(S&R)value of the network urgently.In this paper,we summarize the architecture and vulnerability in IoT and propose a comprehensive information security evaluation model based on multi-level decomposition feedback.The evaluation model provides an idea for information security evaluation of IoT and guides the security decision maker for dynamic protection.Firstly,we establish an overall evaluation indicator system that includes four primary indicators of threat information,asset,vulnerability,and management,respectively.It also includes eleven secondary indicators of system protection rate,attack detection rate,confidentiality,availability,controllability,identifiability,number of vulnerabilities,vulnerability hazard level,staff organization,enterprise grading and service continuity,respectively.Then,we build the core algorithm to enable the evaluation model,wherein a novel weighting technique is developed and a quantitative method is proposed to measure the S&R value.Moreover,in order to better supervise the performance of the proposed evaluation model,we present four novel indicators includes residual risk,continuous conformity of residual risk,head-to-tail consistency and decrease ratio,respectively.Simulation results show the advantages of the proposed model in the evaluation of information security for IoT.

Information Flow Security Models for Cloud Computing

Cloud computing provides services to users through Internet.This open mode not only facilitates the access by users,but also brings potential security risks.In cloud computing,the risk of data leakage exists between users and virtual machines.Whether direct or indirect data leakage,it can be regarded as illegal information flow.Methods,such as access control models can control the information flow,but not the covert information flow.Therefore,it needs to use the noninterference models to detect the existence of illegal information flow in cloud computing architecture.Typical noninterference models are not suitable to certificate information flow in cloud computing architecture.In this paper,we propose several information flow models for cloud architecture.One model is for transitive cloud computing architecture.The others are for intransitive cloud computing architecture.When concurrent access actions execute in the cloud architecture,we want that security domain and security domain do not affect each other,that there is no information flow between security domains.But in fact,there will be more or less indirect information flow between security domains.Our models are concerned with how much information is allowed to flow.For example,in the CIP model,the other domain can learn the sequence of actions.But in the CTA model,the other domain can’t learn the information.Which security model will be used in an architecture depends on the security requirements for that architecture.

Challenges and Solutions of Information Security Issues in the Age of Big Data

Big data has been taken as a Chinese national strategy in order to satisfy the developments of the social and economic requirements and the development of new information technology. The prosperity of big data brings not only convenience to people's daily life and more opportunities to enterprises, but more challenges with information security as well. This paper has a research on new types and features of information security issues in the age of big data, and puts forward the solutions for the above issues: build up the big data security management platform, set up the establishment of information security system and implement relevant laws and regulations.

Distributed Information Flow Verification for Secure Service Composition in Smart Sensor Network

Accelerate processor, efficient software and pervasive connections provide sensor nodes with more powerful computation and storage ability, which can offer various services to user. Based on these atomic services, different sensor nodes can cooperate and compose with each other to complete more complicated tasks for user. However, because of the regional characteristic of sensor nodes, merging data with different sensitivities become a primary requirement to the composite services, and information flow security should be intensively considered during service composition. In order to mitigate the great cost caused by the complexity of modeling and the heavy load of single-node verification to the energy-limited sensor node, in this paper, we propose a new distributed verification framework to enforce information flow security on composite services of smart sensor network. We analyze the information flows in composite services and specify security constraints for each service participant. Then we propose an algorithm over the distributed verification framework involving each sensor node to participate in the composite service verification based on the security constraints. The experimental results indicate that our approach can reduce the cost of verification and provide a better load balance.

A Hybrid Method of Coreference Resolution in Information Security

In the field of information security,a gap exists in the study of coreference resolution of entities.A hybrid method is proposed to solve the problem of coreference resolution in information security.The work consists of two parts:the first extracts all candidates(including noun phrases,pronouns,entities,and nested phrases)from a given document and classifies them;the second is coreference resolution of the selected candidates.In the first part,a method combining rules with a deep learning model(Dictionary BiLSTM-Attention-CRF,or DBAC)is proposed to extract all candidates in the text and classify them.In the DBAC model,the domain dictionary matching mechanism is introduced,and new features of words and their contexts are obtained according to the domain dictionary.In this way,full use can be made of the entities and entity-type information contained in the domain dictionary,which can help solve the recognition problem of both rare and long entities.In the second part,candidates are divided into pronoun candidates and noun phrase candidates according to the part of speech,and the coreference resolution of pronoun candidates is solved by making rules and coreference resolution of noun phrase candidates by machine learning.Finally,a dataset is created with which to evaluate our methods using information security data.The experimental results show that the proposed model exhibits better performance than the other baseline models.

Information security through controlled quantum teleportation networks

Information security is the backbone of current intelligent systems,such as the Internet of Things(IoT),smart grids,and Machine-to-Machine(M2M)communication.The increasing threat of information security requires new models to ensure the safe transmission of information through such systems.Recently,quantum systems have drawn much attention since they are expected to have a significant impact on the research in information security.This paper proposes a quantum teleportation scheme based on controlled multi-users to ensure the secure information transmission among users.Quantum teleportation is an original key element in a variety of quantum information tasks as well as quantum-based technologies,which plays a pivotal role in the current progress of quantum computing and communication.In the proposed scheme,the sender transmits the information to the receiver under the control of a third user or controller.Here,we show that the efficiency of the proposed scheme depends on the properties of the transmission channel and the honesty of the controller.Compared with various teleportation scheme presented recently in the literature,the most important difference in the proposed scheme is the possibility of suspicion about the honesty of the controller and,consequently,taking proper precautions.

Relating Maxwell's demon and quantitative analysis of information leakage for practical imperative programs

Shannon observed the relation between information entropy and Maxwell demon experiment to come up with information entropy formula. After that, Shannon＇s entropy formula is widely used to measure information leakage in imperative programs. But in the present work, our aim is to go in a reverse direction and try to find possible Maxwell＇s demon experimental setup for contemporary practical imperative programs in which variations of Shannon＇s entropy formula has been applied to measure the information leakage. To establish the relation between the second principle of thermodynamics and quantitative analysis of information leakage, present work models contemporary variations of imperative programs in terms of Maxwell＇s demon experimental setup. In the present work five contemporary variations of imperative program related to information quantification are identified. They are： （i） information leakage in imperative program, （ii） imperative multi- threaded program, （iii） point to point leakage in the imperative program, （iv） imperative program with infinite observation, and （v） imperative program in the SOA-based environment. For these variations, minimal work required by an attacker to gain the secret is also calculated using historical Maxwell＇s demon experiment. To model the experimental setup of Maxwell＇s demon, non-interference security policy is used. In the present work, imperative programs with one-bit secret information have been considered to avoid the complexity. The findings of the present work from the history of physics can be utilized in many areas related to information flow of physical computing, nano-computing, quantum computing, biological computing, energy dissipation in computing, and computing power analysis.

Identification and Validation of Social Media Socio-Technical Information Security Factors with Respect to Usable-Security Principles

The goal of this manuscript is to present a research finding, based on a study conducted to identify, examine, and validate Social Media (SM) socio-technical information security factors, in line with usable-security principles. The study followed literature search techniques, as well as theoretical and empirical methods of factor validation. The strategy used in literature search includes Boolean keywords search, and citation guides, using mainly web of science databases. As guided by study objectives, 9 SM socio-technical factors were identified, verified and validated. Both theoretical and empirical validation processes were followed. Thus, a theoretical validity test was conducted on 45 Likert scale items, involving 10 subject experts. From the score ratings of the experts, Content Validity Index (CVI) was calculated to determine the degree to which the identified factors exhibit appropriate items for the construct being measured, and 7 factors attained an adequate level of validity index. However, for reliability test, 32 respondents and 45 Likert scale items were used. Whereby, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α-values) were generated using SPSS. Subsequently, 8 factors attained an adequate level of reliability. Overall, the validated factors include;1) usability—visibility, learnability, and satisfaction;2) education and training—help and documentation;3) SM technology development—error handling, and revocability;4) information security —security, privacy, and expressiveness. In this case, the confirmed factors would add knowledge by providing a theoretical basis for rationalizing information security requirements on SM usage.

Information Availability: An Insight into the Most Important Attribute of Information Security

This paper presents an in-depth understanding of Availability, which is one of the important pillars of Information Security and yet is not taken too seriously while talking about the security of an information system. The paper highlights the importance of Availability w.r.t. Security of information and the other attributes of security and also gives a realistic shape to the existing CIA triad security model. An in-depth understanding of the various factors that can impact the Availability of an information system (Software, Hardware and Network) is given. The paper also gives a categorization of the type of Availability that a system can have. The paper also explains the relation between Availability and other security attributes and also explains through what issues an information system may go while providing Availability.

Metaheuristics with Machine Learning Enabled Information Security on Cloud Environment

The increasing quantity of sensitive and personal data being gathered by data controllers has raised the security needs in the cloud environment.Cloud computing(CC)is used for storing as well as processing data.Therefore,security becomes important as the CC handles massive quantity of outsourced,and unprotected sensitive data for public access.This study introduces a novel chaotic chimp optimization with machine learning enabled information security(CCOML-IS)technique on cloud environment.The proposed CCOML-IS technique aims to accomplish maximum security in the CC environment by the identification of intrusions or anomalies in the network.The proposed CCOML-IS technique primarily normalizes the networking data by the use of data conversion and min-max normalization.Followed by,the CCOML-IS technique derives a feature selection technique using chaotic chimp optimization algorithm(CCOA).In addition,kernel ridge regression(KRR)classifier is used for the detection of security issues in the network.The design of CCOA technique assists in choosing optimal features and thereby boost the classification performance.A wide set of experimentations were carried out on benchmark datasets and the results are assessed under several measures.The comparison study reported the enhanced outcomes of the CCOML-IS technique over the recent approaches interms of several measures.

Information Security Evaluation of Industrial Control Systems Using Probabilistic Linguistic MCDM Method

Industrial control systems(ICSs)are widely used in various fields,and the information security problems of ICSs are increasingly serious.The existing evaluation methods fail to describe the uncertain evaluation information and group evaluation information of experts.Thus,this paper introduces the probabilistic linguistic term sets(PLTSs)to model the evaluation information of experts.Meanwhile,we propose a probabilistic linguistic multi-criteria decision-making(PL-MCDM)method to solve the information security assessment problem of ICSs.Firstly,we propose a novel subscript equivalence distance measure of PLTSs to improve the existing methods.Secondly,we use the Best Worst Method(BWM)method and Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation(CRITIC)method to obtain the subjective weights and objective weights,which are used to derive the combined weights.Thirdly,we use the subscript equivalence distance measure method and the combined weight method to improve the probabilistic linguistic Visekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje(PL-VIKOR)method.Finally,we apply the proposed method to solve the information security assessment problem of ICSs.When comparing with the existing methods such as the probabilistic linguistic Tomada deDecisão Iterativa Multicritério(PL-TODIM)method and probabilistic linguistic Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution(PL-TOPSIS)method,the case example shows that the proposed method can provide more reasonable ranking results.By evaluating and ranking the information security level of different ICSs,managers can identify problems in time and guide their work better.

Security-Critical Components Recognition Algorithm for Complex Heterogeneous Information Systems

With the skyrocketing development of technologies,there are many issues in information security quantitative evaluation(ISQE)of complex heterogeneous information systems(CHISs).The development of CHIS calls for an ISQE model based on security-critical components to improve the efficiency of system security evaluation urgently.In this paper,we summarize the implication of critical components in different filed and propose a recognition algorithm of security-critical components based on threat attack tree to support the ISQE process.The evaluation model establishes a framework for ISQE of CHISs that are updated iteratively.Firstly,with the support of asset identification and topology data,we sort the security importance of each asset based on the threat attack tree and obtain the security-critical components(set)of the CHIS.Then,we build the evaluation indicator tree of the evaluation target and propose an ISQE algorithm based on the coefficient of variation to calculate the security quality value of the CHIS.Moreover,we present a novel indicator measurement uncertainty aiming to better supervise the performance of the proposed model.Simulation results show the advantages of the proposed algorithm in the evaluation of CHISs.

Guest Editorial Special Issue on Information Security

The Intemet is a popular channel for allowing more and more users to exchange information without geographical limitations and time restrictions. Therefore, a large amount of digital data, such as digital images, text, audio, and video, is transmitted over the Intemet. Unfortunately, sensitive digital data can be intercepted by malicious users of the Internet, so the development of techniques for ensuring the secrecy and security of data during transmission has become a top priority.