Integrated Blockchain and Cloud Computing Systems: A Systematic Survey, Solutions, and Challenges

Cloud computing is a network model of on-demand access for sharing configurable computing resource pools. Compared with conventional service architectures, cloud computing introduces new security challenges in secure service management and control, privacy protection, data integrity protection in distributed databases, data backup, and synchronization. Blockchain can be leveraged to address these challenges, partly due to the underlying characteristics such as transparency, traceability, decentralization, security, immutability, and automation. We present a comprehensive survey of how blockchain is applied to provide security services in the cloud computing model and we analyze the research trends of blockchain-related techniques in current cloud computing models. During the reviewing, we also briefly investigate how cloud computing can affect blockchain, especially about the performance improvements that cloud computing can provide for the blockchain. Our contributions include the following: (i) summarizing the possible architectures and models of the integration of blockchain and cloud computing and the roles of cloud computing in blockchain; (ii) classifying and discussing recent, relevant works based on different blockchain-based security services in the cloud computing model; (iii) simply investigating what improvements cloud computing can provide for the blockchain; (iv) introducing the current development status of the industry/major cloud providers in the direction of combining cloud and blockchain; (v) analyzing the main barriers and challenges of integrated blockchain and cloud computing systems; and (vi) providing recommendations for future research and improvement on the integration of blockchain and cloud systems.

Comprehensive Survey of Multimedia Steganalysis: Techniques, Evaluations, and Trends in Future Research

During recent years, emerging multimedia processing techniques with information security services have received a lot of attention. Among those trends are steganography and steganalysis. Steganography techniques aim to hide the existence of secret messages in an innocent-looking medium, where the medium before and after embedding looks symmetric. Steganalysis techniques aim to breach steganography techniques and detect the presence of invisible messages. In the modern world, digital multimedia such as audio, images, and video became popular and widespread, which makes them perfect candidates for steganography. Monitoring this huge multimedia while the user communicates with the outside world is very important for detecting whether there is a hidden message in any suspicious communication. However, steganalysis has a significant role in many fields, such as to extract the stego-message, to detect suspicious hidden messages and to evaluate the robustness of existing steganography techniques. This survey provides the general principles of hiding secret messages using digital multimedia as well as reviewing the background of steganalysis. In this survey, the steganalysis is classified based on many points of view for better understanding. In addition, it provides a deep review and summarizes recent steganalysis approaches and techniques for audio, images, and video. Finally, the existing shortcomings and future recommendations in this field are discussed to present a useful resource for future research.

Legal and practical dimensions of the protection of areas, facilities and devices important for state security

The article discusses the legal obligations of heads of units included in the register of areas, facilities and devices subject to mandatory protection in the voivodeship. The obligation of the head of the unit to provide physical or technical protection of an object. Significant items for state security with the use of internal security services or personal and property protection agencies – that is often criticized. However, it should be remembered that the cooperation of services, guards and inspections with the private sector is necessary to obtain an appropriate level of security. In addition, practical ways to ensure the safety of areas, facilities and devices subject to mandatory protection are also presented. The current technological development does not reduce the protection of the facility only to physical protection, allowing the use of modern technical security systems in order to support the activities of specialized employees of armed security formations. Due to the above, the authors described the operation of selected technical security systems in protected facilities.

Management Analysis of the Economic Security of Enterprises

The unstable conditions of the market economy force the leadership of economic entities to especially carefully monitor the provision of economic security. An important tool in the activities of the economic security services (ECS) of enterprises can be management analysis tools. The goal of the study is to identify the most effective elements of the management analysis method, through which economic security specialists can protect firms from internal threats as effectively as possible. In article the author systematized theoretical aspects of ensuring economic security of the enterprises, presented results of observation and the analysis of work of services of economic security in 40 firms of the real sector of economy of the Central Federal District (CFD) and also offered key indicators for assessment of the weakest points in activity of experts of ECS. The author recommended key indicators for evaluation: forecasting the activities of enterprises, their effectiveness in terms of alternative projects, investment security. The author believes that key indicators should be calculated and analyzed as part of the express monitoring of enterprises in order to identify potential economic threats as quickly as possible, but easily. In order to assess the forecasting of the financial and economic activities of enterprises and the effectiveness of their functioning in the context of alternative projects, specialists of economic security services should, first of all, subject the operating processes of the company to checks: supply, production, sales.

Human Rights Obligations of Private Security and Military Companies: A Review of the Current Legal Framework and Practices

The rapid growth in demand for private military and security services among states,international organizations and non-state actors has turned this activity into a powerful industry withmillions of people who perform – on a contractual basis and in exchange for monetary rewards – actions,which, however, often pose risks to the rights of others, local communities and nations around theworld. The author explains the urgency of the article by high-profile cases of possible participationof private military companies in the events of the occupation of Crimea and the armed conflict inDonbas, initiation of new legislation on military consulting in Ukraine and, at the same time, by themodest attention of Ukrainian jurisprudence to human rights obligations of companies providingsecurity services as non-governmental entities. The author examines the evolution of some approaches to the international legal regulation of private military and security activities and their compliance with modern approaches to humanrights. The author analyzes the features of corporate responsibility in the field of human rights ofprivate military and security companies, the content of which is embodied in the InternationalCode of Conduct for Private Security Providers (ICoC). The analysis compares the approaches ofthe International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers and the UN Guiding Principleson Business and Human Rights.

Ballistic strength of aerated concrete

In regional studies conducted by the Law Enforcement Agency and the Armed Forces within the scope of counter-terrorism activities, to ensure peace and security throughout the country and for the police and military personnel to provide security services, the need to produce different solutions has arisen in the face of attacks on the security points established at many important points, especially at the entrance and exit points of the cities. In this context, by changing the direction and angle of the wall types made of aerated concrete used in construction techniques, 7 variations were tested on these wall types with materials formed with adhesive mortar+plaster, monolithic elastomer polyurea, and non-Newtonian fluid, and the strength of these materials were tested with BR6 and BR7 bullets. The main purpose of this study was to determine the most suitable material in terms of security parameters in the shortest time and at a low cost and to create a reliable structure for security cabins. At the end of the study, the best results were obtained with the shots made on the narrow surface of the aerated concrete and the shots made on the platform formed with non-Newtonian fluid.

Securitary Text on Images with RC-128 Bit Synthric Key Encryption

The main purpose of using cryptography is to provide the following four basic information security services. One of the purposes of cryptography is secrecy. Confidentiality is the fundamental security service provided by cryptography. This is a security service that stores information from unauthorized persons. Confidentiality can be achieved through a variety of ways ranging from physical security to the use of mathematical algorithms for data encryption. Vernam cipher is a stream cipher where the original data or plain with 8x8 block operation. Experimental results prove that RC4 can perform encryption and decryption with a fast execution process. In this study used a processor with 8GB of RAM. The encryption result of the text used yields the average encryption time and decryption average of 2 second.

A resilient micro-payment infrastructure: an approach based on blockchain technology

Resilient micro-payment infrastructures are critical assets to digital economy as they help protecting transactions and promote micro shopping. In this paper, we present a micro-payment infrastructure based on blockchain technology that is capable of decreasing the complexity of transactions’ verification, reducing losses, and protecting against various cyber attacks. This infrastructure is user trust-aware, in the sense that it builds a trust function capable of providing real time management of the user’s trust levels based on historic activity and then adapts the level of verification and risk of user’s misconduct. Moreover, three different trust models are developed to provide different estimations of the tokens’ block size to be submitted to the blockchain network for verification and management of the user waiting time. The micropayment infrastructure provides different security services such as authentication, doublespending and double-selling prevention, tokens forging prevention, transaction traceability, and resilience to cyber-attack. In addition, its reactivity is improved through the reduction of the verification delay and user waiting time.

Police Force in the Formation of the Modern State: Development and Transformation of the Police Force in Iran

Public security was unable to achieve any systematic order until the start of urbanization. With the formation of modern cities, the need to ensure the security of people and their living spaces were met primarily by city administrators and then by regular internal security organizations. This article discusses Iran’s security system as it existed in the pre-modern period and the internal security strategies that transformed in line with the modern understanding of the state. The concept of internal security in Iran has gone through the following four main phases: (1) military methods that had been applied by the senior administrators of the states that had ruled the region before the Qajar Dynasty, (2) the first professionalization that saw the Nazmiyya Organization established in the Qajar Dynasty through efforts to separate policing from military service, (3) the re-militarization of internal security services and focus on intelligence activities during the Pahlavi Dynasty that had been established after the Rıza Han coup, and (4) the ideological appearance of the police organization accompanied by the theo-political orientation that emerged after the 1979 Revolution. This text discusses these four phases in detail.