IT or information technology refers to the distinct usage of any specific system, storage, networking, and other physical devices, procedures, and infrastructure for exchanging, securing, and processing electronic data and information effectively. One of such technologies is fog computing, a centralized computerized infrastructure where information and different applications are located within the source of the data and the respective cloud (Iorga et al., 2018). The technology is responsible for bringing different benefits and the power of the cloud to the user. It involves the process to bring intelligence and processing much closer to the location in which the data is being created accordingly. Hence, efficiency would be improved for better security and compliance. The following report outlines a brief discussion on fog computing and security issues. This report would be providing a literature review on these security issues with strategies for solving them.
i) According to Chen et al. (2017), there have been major radical changes in the technological field, and these are developing cloud computing as well as a prevalent mobile device. It is being observed that the involvement of cloud or mobile devices can leverage the most powerful computing capabilities of the specific cloud and even the mobility support of different mobile devices. However, a few aspects are identified in the present condition of using these devices, such as frequently unpredictable network latency, security and privacy issues, and even geographically constrained applications. For reducing these impacts, fog computing has been introduced into the technological world. This particular technology disperses advanced computing, networking, storage, and even managerial services closer to the end users to form a dispersed and virtualized platform.
This article is suitable for understanding the concept of fog computing and different security issues. It has the aspects of relevancy, reliability, and accuracy, potential for bias, timeliness, and completeness. The technology also offers several major benefits expected by the present applications like real-time processor, affordable and rapid scaling, resources pooling, and local content. The article can be termed as accurate for the topic. The authors have mentioned the main characteristics of this fog computing, including possessing edge location, latency sensitivity, offering real-time interactions, having online analytics and interaction with the respective cloud, and many more. Furthermore, the authors have investigated the specific issue with the consideration of the technology of the Internet of Things and checking for complexities, dynamicity, fault diagnosis, and even tolerance. They have stated that the present and upcoming application demands fog computing like connected vehicles, autopilot vehicles, smart cities, linked manufacturing, and different linked oil and gas systems.
ii) Atlam et al. (2018) have mentioned that the rapid growth of the Internet of Things has been responsible for ensuring that the business would be benefitted and different challenges would be avoided. The main reason for amalgamating cloud computing and the even the IoT or Internet of Things is that a few challenges are prevalent in the technology of cloud, like low latency, low capacity, and network failure. The fog is responsible for providing IoT data processing as well as storage locally at different IoT devices and not sending them to the specific cloud. On the contrary, fog computing is responsible for providing faster responses and better quality services.
This particular article is being selected as it is suitable for understanding all security issues in fog computing and the process to deal with them successfully. It is needed to ensure that fog computing might be considered the best choice for enabling the IoT to provide efficient and highly secured services for different technology users. The deployment of this fog computing with the technology of the Internet of Things is effective for analyzing the benefits and significance of confidentiality of the data and information and even the core potential for providing these advantages to the user. The authors have highlighted latency constraints and IoT security challenges, which are needed to be avoided in the business processes by the users under every circumstance. Hence, the challenges of fog computing can be successfully avoided with the involvement of IoT in cloud computing.
Fog computing is an architecture that uses edge devices for carrying out a considerable amount of computations, communication, and storage either locally or routed on the Internet (Mahmud et al., 2018). The technology is intended for properly distributed computing, in which several peripheral devices are linked to the cloud. Most devices would generate voluminous raw data and then forward the data to the cloud-based servers to the processed. It is needed to ensure that different computing units would be focused with a subsequent data generating device so that the processed information would be forwarded and every bandwidth requirement would be reduced majorly (Mukherjee et al., 2017).
A vital advantage of this fog computing is that the same devices that generated the data would require the processed data. As a result, this data processing would be done remotely, and the latency within response and input would be decreased successfully. According to Naha et al. (2018), there are a few potential examples of the technology, and one of the major use cases is traffic control. The inclusion of sensors is needed to detect traffic so that the negative impacts are reduced and connected to the cellular networks. Autonomous vehicles can benefit and function as the edge devices for huge onboard computation power. All of these vehicles should be capable of ingesting data from several sensors and hence performing real-time data analytics as well as responding accordingly.
As per Aljumah and Ahanger (2018), there are a few advantages that are prevalent in the technology, and these can be extremely effective for the users with the involvement of fog computing. The evolution of IoT devices has considered a larger amount of information being produced, and these data eventually come with higher bandwidth needs. Fog computing was eventually developed for overcoming every specific technical complexity faced by the cloud, and it has the capability of making access to data rapidly and efficiently. Hence, it is effective enough for managing, accessing, analyzing and storing the data. In spite of the fact that fog computing involves several advantages to the information technology infrastructure, it also comes with several drawbacks (Ali et al., 2020). The main benefits of fog computing are privacy, productivity, security, bandwidth and latency.
The subsequent increase in the number of different connected devices with the cloud can form fog computing. Despite having such distinct advantages, there are a few security issues prevalent in the technology and need to be avoided on top-level priority (Fog Computing Market. 2022). These security issues of fog computing are provided in the following paragraphs:
i) Authentication and Trust Issues: The first and the foremost security issue in fog computing is authentication and trust issues. Kartheek and Bhushan (2020) have stated that authentication is a distinct issue of fog computing as these services are being offered at a larger scale to the users. This particular aspect is the core procedure to determine whether any specific individual accessing the data or information has the validation and verification for doing that or not. This particular technology also provides access control for different systems by simply checking if the users’ credentials match the credentials in a database of the authenticated users or within the data authentications server.
According to Alrawais et al. (2017), the respective providers of fog service could be completely different parties, such as cloud service providers, end-users and Internet service providers. Hence, such flexibility and scalability complicate the entire structure as well as the trust situation of this fog. It is being checked that a fake fog node is the specific fog device, which often pretends to be ethical and legal and eventually persuades the end-user to get a connection to it. As soon as the user connects to the fog, it can manipulate the signals that are coming to and from the user to the specific cloud. Hence, attacks are being launched by attackers and hackers, and the organizational management cannot easily deal with these issues (Khan et al., 2017). The user credentials are needed to be stored properly with proper hashing and encryption techniques. The poorly secured passwords must be avoided in the organizational management for better security.
ii) Privacy: The second vital and significant security issue in fog computing is the privacy aspect. Privacy concern has always been present when a few networks are included in the process. As the technology of fog computing is on the basis of wireless technology for the users, there is a major aspect related to network privacy. It is noted that there are a few fog nodes that every end-user is accessing. The highly sensitive information can be passed from every end-user to the respective fog nodes (Chatterjee et al., 2019).
Hence, privacy issues are evident in the technology, such as the proliferation of devices and lack of access control in the business processes and operations. Moreover, visibility and automation attributes are also identified for the privacy issue of fog computing. The most distinct reason for which the privacy issues are included in this fog computing technology is the involvement of the unique characteristics like mobility, heterogeneity and even larger scale distribution aspects. As a result, the user faces authentication issues in the resource network within the respective fog platform and the end-user. Desai et al. (2021), the lack of intrusion detection system can be termed responsible for these privacy issues in fog computing.
iii) Security Issues for Connecting to fog Nodes: Another distinct and noteworthy security issue in fog computing is the subsequent connection to the fog nodes. These security concerns arise as there are several devices linked to the fog nodes as well as at various gateways. Fog nodes are certain distributed entities of fog computing that enable the overall implementation of various fog services and are eventually formed by a minimum of one or more physical devices with the core capabilities of processing and sensing like computers, mobile phones, smart edge devices, temperature sensor and cars (Puthal et al., 2019).
As a result, there were issues like low latency, and locational awareness, as well as mobility support, was absent. The most distinct task of this fog is delivering data and then placing it much closer to the user, who would be positioned at the location or the network’s edge. However, due to the multiple connections to the fog nodes, it has become distinctive for users to analyze the situation and reduce the connectivity level successfully (Ekanayake et al., 2018). Moreover, data protection and data availability attributes are also impacted, and the organizational management is unable to execute a highly secured transmission of data.
iv) Lack of Data Confidentiality in the Fog Servers: The next vital and significant security issue in fog computing is the lack of data confidentiality in the fog servers. Confidentiality of the users’ data is a vital issue to be considered while successfully externalizing and outsourcing the highly confidential and sensitive data to the fog server. This sensitive data should be made unreachable to the users who do not have proper authentication and authorization for accessing it, hence ensuring that this confidentiality would be considered by using severe access control regulations and policies (Abbasi & Shah, 2017). Moreover, the lack of trust among the users and fog service providers has been a vital issue for security. It stops several individuals and users from using the services accordingly. It could also impact the data loss issues, and the users would face issues in accessing the data accordingly and making connections in the fog servers subsequently.
v) Access Control: As per Zhang et al. (2018), the involvement of fog computing is also responsible for impacting the access control factor of the user. The attacker is doing it through behavioral profiling of the methodologies and processes, and the unauthorized accessibility can be termed as responsible for creating issues for the business. The next method of impacting access control is attribute encryption. The most commonly used encryption techniques that the attackers are utilizing for such aspects are the advanced algorithm of encryption standard as well as the RSA algorithm.
As fog computing mainly originates from technology, a few security issues exist that are similar to the cloud. With attribute-based cryptography, the user can gain the guarantee for data confidentiality and segregated data access control (Chatterjee et al., 2019). The smart meters could even encrypt and send the data to any specific fog device like the home area network’s gateway and measure the outcomes for passing them to the fog server.
vi) Cyber Security Attacks: There are several possible attacks associated with cyber security in fog computing technology. As the fog nodes are being installed within a few locations with extremely weaker security, they could encounter several malicious attacks or threats in the procedure. Moreover, a highly malicious user could even tamper with the smart meter, spoof IP addresses and even report any fake reading, which is extremely vulnerable to business procedures (Ali et al., 2020).
Some different malicious nodes and attacks are present in the fog nodes. The huge workloads within fog computing are subdivided into different jobs processed by the fog nodes. One is a DoS or denial of service attack, where the systems are blocked. Hence, it would ensure that data security would be enhanced. The involvement of a man-in-the-middle attack or MITM is a distinct attack in cyber security (Zhang et al., 2018). A MITM attack is a specific cyber threat or attack in which the attacker relays and modifies the distinct communications between two parties, who consider that they are directly communicating with one another; since the attacker has subsequently inserted themselves within two distinct parties.
It is being used in business operations as opposed to entertainment and personal technologies. There are different examples of information technology, and these include cloud computing, fog computing, artificial intelligence, IoT, big data and many more. The impact of these technologies has been distinctive on the business processes and operations. The conceptual model of NIST of fog computing could be considered distinct for reducing the impacts (Fog Computing Conceptual Model of NIST. 2022). The model provides an updated version of the steps that are required to be implemented. There are different strategies that can be considered for reducing all security issues in fog computing, and these are provided in the following paragraphs:
i) The organizational management requires focusing on privacy preservation in the technology to ensure that all negative aspects are avoided. It would be needed as the users have different concerns regarding the highly sensitive data, and new technologies would be required to be implemented for effective results and outcomes. According to Mahmud et al. (2018), the involvement of highly secured systems would be required for ensuring that access control is maintained so that the result is improved under every circumstance.
ii) The respective business should also secure their communications within the constrained fog nodes and IoT devices. It would
ensure that the attacks within the network would be avoided successfully, and a robust and significant attribute would be checked under every circumstance (Iorga et al., 2018).
iii) Proper service availability is also needed in the business to decrease cyber threats or attacks, and hence millions of users’ requests can be analyzed to effectively improve the process. It emphasizes on the aspect that the organizational management can reduce their chances of cyber threats and attacks.
Conclusion and Discussion on the Implications for Future Research
Therefore, a conclusion could be drawn that the impact of fog computing is extremely effective and beneficial for business processes and operations. This particular technology is responsible for enabling short-termed analytics at the edge, and a proper computing procedure is needed to be considered. It is needed to perform highly advanced analytics as well as machine learning tasks and activities. The inclusion of fog computing can easily process the information and provide a response in a timely manner by having every endpoint in the process. This report has provided a detailed discussion on fog computing and its security issues for any specific business or company. There would be several future implications for future research as well for fog computing. It is required to process the data closer to where it originated, helps keep the storage and processing requirements of the core processing center low and makes processes extremely fast. As per the analysis, it could be concluded that fog computing technology is the future of cloud computing for any business.
Reference List
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