Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / Software often requires patches to be installed post-implementation for a variety of reasons. Organisations and individuals, however, do not always promptly install these patches as and when they are released. This study investigated the reasons for the delay or hesitation, identified the challenges, and proposed a model that could assist organisations in overcoming the identified challenges. The research investigated the extent to which the integration of software patch management and enterprise data security is an important management responsibility, by reviewing relevant documents and interviewing key role players currently involved in the patch management process. The current challenges and complexities involved in patch management at an enterprise level could place organisations at risk by compromising their enterprise-data security. This research primarily sought to identify the challenges causing the management of software patches to be complex, and further attempted to establish how organisations currently implement patch management. The aim of the study was to explore the complexities of software patch management in order to enhance enterprise data security within organisations. A single case study was used, and data were obtained from primary sources and literature. The study considered both technological and human factors, and found that both factors play an equally important role with regard to the successful implementation of a patch management program within an organisation.

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017. / Information and communication technologies are moving fast. Consequently, organisations must be aware of this evolution and adapt to take full advantage of the benefits offered by these technologies. Cloud computing is a new concept of accessing data centers and various computing resources via the internet through any devices and from anywhere. Large organizations, such as Higher Education Institutions (HEI), are gradually adopting cloud computing to reduce their very high budgets. In emerging countries, more and more HEIs are adopting the services offered by cloud computing, more precisely in South Africa in the Western Cape. However, cloud computing affects the way IT services are delivered by traditional HEI IT departments. Thus the objective of this study is to explore the impact of cloud computing on the role of the IT department of HEIs, using a case study. To fulfil this objective, interviews were conducted within the IT department of an HEI, including the IT staff, and it was found that cloud computing affects the role of the IT department by changing the roles and responsibilities of some IT staff, as well as the focus of certain posts in the department. In addition, cloud computing also affects the department's culture. Fortunately, no IT staff have lost their posts. Other results show that training and certification were necessary for the IT to adapt to the changes. Cloud computing adds value to the IT department because it offers a daily 24-hour service as opposed to the traditional IT department.

La virtualisation apparaît comme étant une solution clé pour révolutionner l'architecture ossifiée des réseaux comme Internet. En ajoutant une couche d'abstraction au-dessus du matériel, la virtualisation permet de gérer et de configurer des réseaux virtuels indépendamment les uns des autres. La flexibilité qui en résulte donne à l'opérateur d'un réseau virtuel la possibilité de configurer la topologie, et de modifier les piles protocolaires. Jusqu'à présent, la virtualisation du réseau a été implémentée dans des plateformes de test ou de recherche, pour permettre l'expérimentation avec les protocoles de routage. Dans le but d'introduire la virtualisation dans les réseaux de production comme ceux de l'Internet, plusieurs nouveaux défis apparaissent, dont en particulier la performance et le partage des ressources de commutation et de routage. Ces deux questions sont particulièrement pertinentes, lorsque le plan de données du réseau lui-même est virtualisé, pour offrir un maximum d'isolation et de configurabilité. Pour cela, nous évaluons et analysons d'abord l'impact de la virtualisation sur la performance des routeurs virtuels logiciels. Puis, dans le but de pouvoir virtualiser le plan de données dans des réseaux de production, nous proposons une architecture matérielle de commutateur virtualisé, permettant le partage différencié des ressources tels que les ports et les tampons mémoire. D'autre part, nous examinons les possibles applications des réseaux virtuels et proposons un service de réseaux virtuels à la demande, avec un routage configurable, et des bandes passantes contrôlées, Nous appliquons et évaluons ce service dans le contexte d'infrastructures virtuelles. / Virtualization appears as a key solution to revolutionize the architecture of ossified networks, such as the Internet. By adding a layer of abstraction on top of the actual hardware, virtual networks can be managed and configured flexibly and independently. The flexibility introduced into the network provides the operator with options for topology reconfiguration, besides allowing it to play with the software stacks and protocols. Today, network virtualization has been realized in research testbeds, allowing researchers to experiment with routing. Introducing virtualization in a production network such as those of the Internet raises several challenges, in particular the performance and the sharing of the routing and switching resources. These are in particular relevant, when the network data plane is virtualized, for maximum isolation and configurability in virtual networks. Therefore, we first evaluate and analyze the impact of virtualization on the performance of virtual software routers. Then, for being able to virtualize the data plane in production networks, we propose a hardware architecture of a virtualized switch, enabling the differentiated sharing of resources such as the ports and the memory buffers. Moreover, we examine the possible applications of virtual networks and propose a service for virtual networks on demand with configurable routing and controlled bandwidth. We apply and evaluate this service in the context of virtual infrastructures.

Orientador: Maurício Ferreira Magalhães / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T04:31:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Pasquini_Rafael_D.pdf: 2243729 bytes, checksum: ec930672675b7ec5f267ae8611acc605 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Roteamento é uma das principais funções em redes de computadores, sendo responsável pelo encaminhamento de tráfego entre todos os pares de nós de origem e destino. O princípio de roteamento comum a protocolos usados mundialmente requer a presença de informação sobre todos os destinos disponíveis, em todos os roteadores compondo a rede, de tal forma a garantir a entrega de tráfego. Desta forma, construir redes em grande escala usando tal princípio de roteamento é amplamente aceito como não escalável. O problema intrínseco destes mecanismos está relacionado ao fato de que as tabelas de roteamento acompanham o crescimento da informação de roteamento presente na rede. Por outro lado, existem mecanismos de roteamento disponíveis na literatura que requerem apenas uma fração de toda a informação de roteamento presente na rede, provendo um melhor controle para a taxa à qual as tabelas de roteamento crescem. Neste cenário, um espaço de identificação plano é usado para identificar, univocamente, todos os nós presentes na rede e relações de vizinhança no espaço de identificação plano são estabelecidas através de uma rede sobreposta, construída sob um substrato de rede, como, por exemplo, uma rede IP. Entretanto, manter a coerência desta rede sobreposta é desafiador, uma vez que os nós podem mudar seus pontos de conexão no substrato de rede, resultando no uso de diferentes endereços (IPs) e requerendo mecanismos para manter ativa a associação entre a rede sobreposta e o substrato de rede. Neste contexto, este trabalho propõe o uso de uma organização de rede alternativa, onde nenhum substrato de rede é necessário para prover a comunicação entre nós no espaço de identificação. O mecanismo de roteamento plano proposto é baseado em uma métrica de ou-exclusivo (XOR) e no conceito de visibilidade local. Tal combinação acarreta a criação de uma estrutura de rede em malha e promove a integração entre o espaço de identificação plano e a estrutura física da rede. Basicamente, o mecanismo de roteamento baseado em operações de XOR efetua roteamento diretamente sob identificadores planos. Este trabalho apresenta a especificação completa do protocolo, descrevendo suas principais propriedades relacionadas ao tamanho das tabelas de roteamento, à quantidade de mensagens de sinalização necessárias para convergir o sistema de roteamento e os caminhos obtidos. Além disso, este trabalho detalha a instanciação do mecanismo de roteamento plano proposto em três diferentes cenários: 1) redes de data centers, 2) redes veiculares ad hoc (VANETs) e 3) o sistema de roteamento entre domínios da Internet / Abstract: Routing is one of the main functions of computer networks, being responsible for traffic forwarding between all pairs of source and destination nodes. The common routing principle of protocols used in networks worldwide requires the presence of information about all available destinations, in all routers composing the network, in order to assure traffic delivery. In this way, building large scale networks using such routing principle is widely regarded as non scalable. The intrinsic problem of such mechanisms is related to the fact that routing tables follow the growth of the routing information present in the network. Conversely, there are routing mechanisms available in the literature which require just a fraction of the overall routing information present in the network, providing a better control for the rate at which the routing tables grow. In such scenario, a flat identity space is used to uniquely refer to all nodes present in the network, and neighborhood relations at the flat identity space are established through an overlay network, built on top of a substrate network, such as an IP network. However, maintaining the correctness of the overlay network is challenging, since nodes can change their attachment points at the substrate network, resulting in the use of different addresses (IPs), and requiring mechanisms to keep the association between the overlay network and the substrate network active. In this context, this work proposes the usage of an alternative network organization, where no substrate network is required to provide the communication between nodes at the flat identity space. The proposed flat routing mechanism is based on the bitwise exclusive or (XOR) metric and in the concept of local visibility. Such combination leads to the creation of a mesh network structure and promotes the integration between the flat identity space and the physical network structure. Basically, the proposed XOR-based routing mechanism performs routing directly on top of flat identifiers. This work presents the entire protocol specification, describing its main properties related to the size of the required routing tables, the amount of signaling messages needed to converge the routing system, and the obtained paths. Afterwards, this work also details the instantiation of the proposed flat routing mechanism in three different scenarios: 1) data center networks, 2) ad hoc vehicular networks (VANETs) and 3) the inter-domain Internet routing system / Doutorado / Engenharia de Computação / Doutor em Engenharia Elétrica

Orientador: Nelson Luis Saldanha da Fonseca / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-25T09:43:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RodriguezBrljevich_Esteban_M.pdf: 2281259 bytes, checksum: 12557ac80a34c2bff2547f1f2aff1eaa (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: A virtualização de redes é uma tecnologia promissora para a Internet do futuro, já que facilita a implementação de novos protocolos e aplicações sem a necessidade de alterar o núcleo da rede. Um passo chave para instanciar redes virtuais é a alocação de recursos físicos para elementos virtuais (roteadores e enlaces). A fim de contribuir para o esforço global de poupança de energia, a escolha de recursos físicos para instanciar uma rede virtual deveria minimizar o consumo de energia rede. No entanto, esta não é uma tarefa trivial, já que requerimentos de QoS devem ser atingidos. A busca da solução ótima deste problema é NP-difícil. O mapeamento de redes virtuais em substratos de rede físicos em cenários de alocaç?o e desalocaç?o de redes virtuais pode não levar a um consumo mínimo de energia devido à dinâmica das atribuições dos elementos virtuais previamente alocados. Tal dinâmica pode levar à subutilização da rede substrato. Para reduzir os efeitos negativos desta dinâmica, técnicas tais como a migração de redes virtuais em tempo real podem ser empregadas para rearranjar as redes virtuais previamente mapeadas para poupar energia. Esta dissertação apresenta um conjunto de novos algoritmos para o mapeamento de redes virtuais em substratos de rede com o objetivo de reduzir o consumo de energia. Além disso, dois novos algoritmos são propostos para a migração dos roteadores e enlaces virtuais para reduzir o número de roteadores e amplificadores ópticos requeridos. Os resultados obtidos por simulação mostram a eficácia dos algoritmos propostos / Abstract: Network virtualization is a promising technology for the Internet of the Future since it facilitates the deployment of new protocols and applications without the need of changing the core of the network. A key step to instantiate virtual networks is the allocation of physical resources to virtual elements (routers and links). In order to contribute to the global effort of saving energy, choice of physical resources to instantiate a virtual network needs to minimize the network energy consumption. However, this is not a trivial task, since the QoS of the application requirements has to be supported. Indeed, the search for the optimal solution of this problem is NP-hard. The mapping of virtual networks on network substrates at the arrival time of requests to the establishment of virtual networks may not lead to a global minimum energy consumption of energy due to the dynamic allocations and deallocations of virtual networks. Actually, such dynamics can lead to the underutilization of the network substrate. To mitigate the negative effect of this dynamics, techniques such as live migration can be employed to rearrange already mapped virtual networks to achieve energy savings. This dissertation presents a set of new algorithms for the mapping of virtual networks on network substrates aiming to reduce energy consumption. Additionally, two new algorithms are proposed for the migration of virtual routers and links to reduce the number of powered routers and optical amplifiers. Results derived by simulation show the efficacy of the proposed algorithms / Mestrado / Ciência da Computação / Mestre em Ciência da Computação

Orientadores: Paulo Sérgio Martins Pedro, Edson Luiz Ursini / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Tecnologia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-23T16:11:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Nunes_SergioEduardo_M.pdf: 1364072 bytes, checksum: cf8027cf1f7cd7aacf19ed01abd8db41 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: Neste trabalho, efetuou-se a avaliação de desempenho em uma rede de pequeno escritório, SOHO (Small Office Home Office), a fim de se conhecer o impacto nas redes de computadores, devido à utilização dos protocolos IPv4, IPv6 ou técnica de transição. As medições realizadas observaram o comportamento da vazão, latência, jitter e perda de pacotes, em três diferentes cenários experimentais: Rede IPv4, Rede IPv6 e Rede Pilha dupla. Os valores numéricos obtidos na análise das redes foram utilizados de forma incremental no programa de simulação ARENA, sendo modelada uma rede multisserviços com condições especiais para teste do impacto. O objetivo desta simulação é conhecer o impacto no comportamento dos serviços stream e elástico devido à variação de desempenho dos protocolos. Tais estudos objetivam ajudar aos administradores de redes no planejamento do período de transição e coexistência, possibilitando com que essa mudança nas redes de computadores possa ocorrer de forma mais suave / Abstract: This work evaluated a SOHO network (Small Office Home Office) in order to assess the impact of the IPv4, IPv6, and their transition protocols, on these networks. The experiments performed measured throughput, latency, jitter and packet loss in three experimental settings: IPv4, IPv6 and Dual Stack. The numeric values obtained in this experimental analysis were further applied, in an incremental fashion, to a multi-services network model built using the ARENA simulation software. The goal of this simulation was to obtain a better understanding of the behavior of both the stream and the elastic services as a function of the variation in protocol performance. This knowledge aims at supporting network managers in their task of planning the transitional period from IPv4 to IPv6, thus allowing for a smoother transition between these protocols / Mestrado / Tecnologia e Inovação / Mestre em Tecnologia

M.Sc. (Computer Science) / Corporations throughout the world are facing numerous challenges in today’s competitive marketplace and are continuously looking for new and innovative means and methods of gaining competitive advantage. One of the means used to gain this advantage is that of information technology, and all the associated technologies and principles. These are primarily used to facilitate business processes and procedures that are designed to provide this competitive advantage. Significant attention has been given to each of the individual technologies and principles of Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Management, Information Security, and Intranets and how they can be leveraged in order to improve efficiency and functionality within a corporation. However, in order to truly reap the benefits of these technologies and principles, it is necessary to look at them as a collaborative system, rather as individual components. This dissertation therefore investigates each of these individual technologies and principles in isolation, as well as in combination with each other to outline potential advantages, associated risks, and disadvantages when combining them within the corporate world. Based on these, the Intelligently Generated Knowledge (IGK) framework is outlined to implement such a collaborative system. Thereafter, an investigation of a theoretical situation is conducted based on this framework to examine the impact of the implementation of this type of collaborative system. The potential increase in cost savings, efficiency and functionality of corporations that would employ the IGK framework is clearly outlined in the theoretical example, and should this approach be adopted, it would be able to provide significant competitive advantage for any corporation.

D.Phil.(Computer Science) / In this thesis we will investigate the development of Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIIP) structures in the developing world. Developing regions are experiencing fast-paced development of information infrastructures, and improvements in related technologies such as Internet connectivity and wireless technologies. The use of these new technologies and the number of new users that are introduced to the Internet can allow cyber threats to flourish. In many cases, Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) can be used to provide CIIP. However, the development of traditional CSIRT-like structures can be problematic in developing regions where technological challenges, legal frameworks, and limited capacity can reduce its overall effectiveness. In this thesis we will introduce the Community-oriented Security, Advisory and Warning (C-SAW) Team. This model is designed to address the challenges to CIIP faced by developing regions by defining a structure that is loosely-coupled and flexible in nature. Furthermore, the aspect of community-orientation is used to allow a C-SAW Team to operate within a designated community of members. This thesis is divided into three primary parts. In Part 1 we will discuss the background research undertaken during this study. The background chapters will lay the foundation for the later chapters in this thesis. In Part 2 we will introduce the C-SAW Team model and elaborate on the construction, relationships, positioning, services, and framework in which it can be deployed. Finally, in Part 3 we present our conclusions to this thesis.

M.Sc. / Using the Internet for communication purposes constitutes a high risk, considering the security of such information. The protocol suite used on the Internet is the TCP/IP protocol suite, which consists of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP). In a bid to create a basis to support the newly conceptualised ideas, various areas of networking are briefly discussed in this dissertation. The first in this series of areas is that of the OSI layers. This model forms the basis of all networking concepts. The model describes seven layers, of which each performs a certain networking function. The TCP/IP protocol suite fits into this model. Network security and encryption methods are applied and followed to secure information on the Internet. These methods have been used over a long period of time and will also be used to support the newly conceptualised ideas. The main focus of this dissertation falls on the securing of certain parts of the information contained in the headers of both the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP) in a bid to minimise the amount of data that may be inferred about the communicating parties from these headers. In addition, where multiple routes exist between hosts, the possibility of the deliberate distribution of a single message across these routes is examined. Such distribution will further complicate the task of a hacker attempting to gather information from TCP and IP headers. In addition, such distribution will minimise the possibility that a hacker may assemble a complete message from its constituent parts and that he/she may infer information about the message that cannot be inferred from the isolated parts. The length of a message sent between hosts is one simple example of such information.

Computers connected to a local area network are often only fully utilized for short periods of time. In fact, most workstations are not used at all for a significant portion of the day. The combined "idle time" of the workstations on a network constitutes a significant computing resource, which is generally wasted. If harnessed properly, such a resource could constitute a cheap alternative to expensive high-performance computers. Adaptive parallelism refers to the parallel execution of a computation on a dynamically changing set of processors. This thesis investigates the viability of this approach as a vehicle to harness the "idle cycles" available on a heterogeneous cluster of networked computers. A system, called Remora, which implements adaptive parallelism via the Linda programming paradigm, is presented. Experiments, performed using Remora, show that adaptive parallelism provides an efficient vehicle for using idle processor cycles, without having an adverse effect on the tasks which constitute the normal workload of the computers being used.