Alejandro Molina Zarca

• PhD
• University of Murcia

In the rapidly evolving landscape of telecommunications, the integration of commercial 5G solutions and the rise of edge computing have reshaped service delivery, emphasizing the customization of requirements through network slices. However, the heterogeneity of devices and technologies in 5G and beyond networks poses significant challenges, partic...

In today's dynamic cybersecurity landscape, static and deterministic services orchestration which does not consider security as part of the orchestration process are proving insufficient against the evolving threat landscape. Security must be an intrinsic part of the orchestration processes. In this regard, this paper introduces an innovative parad...

The adoption of the Computing Continuum is characterised by the seamless integration of diverse computing environments and devices. In this dynamic landscape, sharing resources across the continuum is becoming a reality and security must move an step forward, specially in terms of authentication and authorisation for such a distributed and heteroge...

The management of network intelligence in Beyond 5G (B5G) networks encompasses the complex challenges of scalability, dynamicity, interoperability, privacy, and security. These are essential steps towards achieving the realization of truly ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based analytics, empowering seamless integration across the entire Con...

Research on vehicle-to-everything (V2X) is attracting significant attention nowadays, driven by the recent advances in beyond-5G (B5G) networks and the multi-access edge computing (MEC) paradigm. However, the inherent heterogeneity of B5G combined with the security vulnerabilities of MEC infrastructure in dynamic V2X scenarios introduces unpreceden...

6G networks are beginning to take shape, and it is envisaged that they will be made up of networks from different vendors, and with different technologies, in what is known as the network-of-networks. The topology will be constantly changing, allowing it to adapt to the capacities available at any given moment. 6G networks will be managed automatic...

Due to the fact that the current variability of services is brought by the current networks and the new possibilities that will appear thanks to the near-future networks, Network Slicing has become one of the key elements to allow the co-existence of multiple computing and transportservices with different requirements (i.e., performance, security,...

Smart-campuses are an emerging ecosystem that permit to enhance the performance and efficiency of academic facilities. Besides, they are also adopted as research, development, and testing platforms for the integration of novel management and governance mechanisms in complex ICT infrastructures. In this line, they are considered as small smart-city-...

The pervasiveness of Internet of Things (IoT) has made the management of computer networks more troublesome. The softwarized control provided by Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is not sufficient to overcome the problems raising in this context. An increasing number of attacks can, in fact, occur in SDN-aware IoT networks if the security configura...

The distribution of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in remote areas and the need for network resilience in such deployments is increasingly important in smart spaces covering scenarios, such as agriculture, forest, coast preservation, and connectivity survival against disasters. Although Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies, like LoRa,...

Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are bringing many advantages to optimize and automatize security management at the network edge, enabling the deployment of virtual network security functions (VSFs) in MEC nodes, to strengthen the end-to-end security in IoT environments. The benefits could exploit in mobile M...

IoT systems can be leveraged by Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technologies, thereby strengthening their overall flexibility, security and resilience. In this sense, adaptive and policy-based security frameworks for SDN/NFV-aware IoT systems can provide a remarkable added value for self-protection and se...

As the IoT adoption is growing in several fields, cybersecurity attacks involving low-cost end-user devices are increasing accordingly, undermining the expected deployment of IoT solutions in a broad range of scenarios. To address this challenge, emerging Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies can i...

Despite the advantages that the Internet of Things (IoT) will bring to our daily life, the increasing interconnectivity, as well as the amount and sensitivity of data, make IoT devices an attractive target for attackers. To address this issue, the recent Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD) standard has been proposed to describe network access cont...

The fourth industrial revolution is being mainly driven by the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to support the development lifecycle of systems and products. Despite the well-known advantages for the industry, an increasingly pervasive industrial ecosystem could make such devices an attractive target for potential attackers. Rec...

This book chapter presents the main key innovations being devised, implemented and validated in the scope of Anastacia H2020 EU research project, to meet the cybersecurity challenge of protecting dynamically heterogenous IoT scenarios, endowed with SDN/NFV capabilities, which face evolving kind of cyber-attacks. The key innovations encompasses, amo...

The Internet of Things brings a multi-disciplinary revolution in several application areas. However, security and privacy concerns are undermining a reliable and resilient broad-scale deployment of IoT-enabled Critical Infrastructures (IoT-CIs). To fill this gap, this paper proposes a comprehensive architectural design that captures the main securi...

The increase of Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies is bringing many security management benefits that can be exploited at the edge of Internet of Things (IoT) networks to deal with cyber-threats. In this sense, this paper presents and evaluates a novel policy-based and cyber-situational awareness...

Billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices are expected to populate our environments and provide novel pervasive services by interconnecting the physical and digital world. However, the increased connectivity of everyday objects can open manifold security vectors for cybercriminals to perform malicious attacks. These threats are even augmented by...

This paper proposes a novel policy-based framework to manage Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) and Channel Protection security functions in IoT networks enabled with Software defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies. The virtual AAA, including network authenticators, are deployed as VNF dynamica...