Search

The greatest threats to the security, privacy, and reliability of computer networks and other related information systems in general are cyber crimes committed by cyber criminals, but most importantly hackers. Judging by the damage caused by past cyber criminal and hacker attacks to computer networks in businesses, governments, and individuals, resulting in inconvenience and loss of productivity and credibility, one cannot fail to see that there is a growing community demand to software and hardware companies to create more secure products that can be used to identify threats and vulnerabilities, to fix problems, and to deliver security solutions.

As the previous chapter has introduced network topologies, types, components, and major communication technologies, this chapter completes the network architecture description by presenting network protocols and various services supported by the current networks. The hierarchical organization of network protocols is detailed focusing on the most known reference models and the layered communication paradigm. Furthermore, the various protocol layers are detailed, especially at transport and application layers which involve protocols and services mostly detailed in this book. Last, but not least, the principles of the most popular network-based services are summarized, including electronic mail, Web, and the increasingly popular multimedia-based services.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) creates a seamless link between individual objects and their digital natives. It allows objects to be uniquely, automatically and individually identified using wireless communications. With more than a half century’s development, RFID is becoming the mainstream driving force and has been able to provide various benefits in many different industries. In this chapter, we introduce the basic concepts in RFID technologies and its applications. We discuss the characteristics of RFID data and overview the state-of-the-art research on RFID data management. We also highlight some technical challenges in the management and use of RFID data.

A named object/player (such as a node or service) demands to be discoverable by the rest of the network. A discovery scheme provides such a service to the players. The discovery level is a measure of “how discoverable” a player is by the rest of the network. This is “how easy” it is for the network to discover the player not the opposite. The performance of discovery, or the discovery level, could significantly affect the player’s business model especially in time-sensitive application contexts. This chapter is an exercise in the design of differentiated discovery services, which provide different service levels to different sets of players. We formally define and motivate differentiated discovery and we present a proof-of-concept architecture.

In the previous chapter, we saw how IP packets carry TCP segments or UDP datagrams across networks. Now it is time to look at what happens in the top layer of a TCP/IP-based network, the application layer. This chapter starts with an explanation of client–server technology, which underlies most Internet activities. We examine the following applications in turn: the domain name system (DNS), the World Wide Web, remote access, file transfer, E-mail, the delivery of streamed content over the Internet and voice over IP (VoIP). We discuss the main protocols for each of these applications. The chapter ends with brief descriptions of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, instant messaging (IM) and microblogging.

Stemming from the Greek word “anonymia”, the term anonymity/anonymous stands for “namelessness”, “not identified” or “of unknown name” (Oxford Dictionaries) and usually bears on a person’s appearance in public. Consequently, anonymity occurs if a person’s identity being involved in a not-transparent/not disclosed process is non-determinable since the acting person remains unknown to the other acting entities or makes no appearance towards the other participants or acts within the anonymous process without recognizable name (Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, 2001, https://www.bsi.bund.de/ContentBSI/Publikationen/Studien/anonym/wasistanonymitaet.html;jsessionid=97B15124E289CE809BB8CA90471E5F9A.2_cid241).

Cloud computing is slowly transforming itself from a hype to reality. However, its maturity and further adoption depends on its ability to address concerns such as security, interoperability, portability and governance at the earliest opportunity. This can be accelerated by compliance to guidelines and standards defined in consensus by the cloud providers. Without addressing these concerns, users would be wary to tread this path in spite of its powerful economic model for business computing. This chapter will explore the readiness of various standards of interoperability, security, portability and governance for the cloud computing model. The market adoption of these standards will also be explored and gaps or opportunities for improvement will be discussed.

This paper describes a set of criteria for evaluating defence mechanisms against flooding denial of service (DoS) attacks. Effectiveness and usefulness of a defence mechanism in mitigating a DoS attack depends on many issues which are presented here in the form of a taxonomy. The primary goal of this taxonomy is to help in getting a comprehensive view on both the strengths and weaknesses of a specific defence mechanism. A good defence mechanism should not disturb legitimate traffic when there is no attack, should mitigate the amount of attack traffic well enough, should increase the quality of service (QoS) available to legitimate traffic during an attack, and should use as little resources in this task as possible. In addition, any defence mechanism should be robust against changes in attack characteristics and intentional misuse.

In the context of e-Business, bilateral trading partner agreements (TPA) have been in use for some years between companies wishing to exchange business documents using electronic data interchange. Such agreements have bound the parties to the legality of undertaking paperless trading and eased corporate concerns should disagreements subsequently occur. However, this chapter reviews the main legal issues that arise when conducting e-Commerce for the marketing, buying and selling of products and services over the Web. It does not pretend to provide an exhaustive treatment of the subject, but rather raise awareness of the issues and accompanying legislation so that these may be pursued with experts to address company specific situations.

One useful benefit of the growth of the Internet is the matching growth in common or so-called ‘open’ standards. Just as reliable computer communications are a relatively new development, so are open standards. Although such standards had been available for some time, proprietary standards owned and developed by private corporations used to dominate the computer business, and even today are still in use. But the attractions of open standards in simplifying and reducing the cost of computing and computer communications have been so overwhelming that open standards now dominate. In this chapter, we shall take a more detailed look at some open standards in the TCP/IP suite and how they work — because of their importance in e-Business.