Issam Aib

• University of Waterloo

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks remain a major security problem, the mitigation of which is very hard especially when it comes to highly distributed botnet-based attacks. The early discovery of these attacks, although challenging, is necessary to protect end-users as well as the expensive network infrastructure resources. In this paper...

SUMMARY Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) are designed to monitor a networked environment and generate alerts whenever abnormal activities are detected. The number of these alerts can be very large, making their eval- uation by security analysts a difficult task. Management is complicated by the need to configure the different components of alert...

The support of stateful signatures is an important feature of signature-based Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) which permits the detection of multi-stage attacks. However, due to the difficulty to completely simulate every application protocol, several NIDS evasion techniques exploit this Achilles' heel, making the NIDS and its protected...

With the proliferation of the IEEE 802.11 technology as a universal standard for wireless LAN, the management of access points and wireless stations has become essential to provide QoS to the users. In this article, we propose an autonomic piloting system for load management in large 802.11 networks. Our system supports both a reactive and a proact...

The accuracy of detecting intrusions within a Collaborative Intrusion Detection Network (CIDN) depends on the efficiency of collaboration between peer Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSes) as well as the security itself of the CIDN. In this paper, we propose Dirichlet-based trust management to measure the level of trust among IDSes according to their...

The accuracy of detecting an intrusion within a network of intrusion detection systems (IDSes) depends on the efficiency of collaboration between member IDSes. The security itself within this network is an additional concern that needs to be addressed. In this paper, we present a trust-based framework for secure and effective collaboration within a...

The accuracy of detecting an intrusion within a network of intrusion detection systems (IDSes) depends on the efficiency of collaboration between member IDSes. The security itself within this network is an additional concern that needs to be addressed. In this paper, we present a trust-based framework for secure and effective collaboration within a...

Several intra- and inter-domain quality of service (QoS) provisioning mechanisms for IP networks have been researched and developed using Differentiated Services (DiffServ) technology. However, the incremental efforts needed to manage DiffServ networks from a business-oriented viewpoint have received relatively little attention. This paper addresse...

Network virtualization can offer more flexibility and better manageability for the future Internet by allowing multiple heterogeneous virtual networks (VN) to coexist on a shared infrastructure provider (InP) network. A major challenge in this respect is the VN embedding problem that deals with the efficient mapping of virtual resources on InP netw...

Introduction Requirements for service driven management The SLA Specification of level of service (SLS) Service contract chains SLA types SLA management (SLM) SLA modeling and representation Research projects and activities Conclusion Abbreviations and acronyms Bibliography

As a result of its success, Wi-Fi has been promoted as an access technology to provide full internet connectivity in the municipal area. Supporting application QoS by managing resource provisioning is an important challenge for wireless network operators. This paper proposes a traffic engineering model for managing a Voice over Wi-Fi service in a m...

We identify a new type of stateful IDS evasion, named signature evasion. We formalize the signature evasion on those Stateful IDSs whose state can be modeled using Deterministic Finite State Automata (DFAs). We develop an efficient algorithm which operates on rule set DFAs and derives a minimal rectification of evasive paths. Finally, we evaluate o...

Different trust models have been developed for dealing with possible dishonest behavior and attacks from malicious peer Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) in a collaborative Intrusion Detection Network (IDN). For evaluating and comparing these models, this paper introduces a simulation framework that incorporates different components namely experti...

The human immune system (HIS) plays an important role in protecting the human body from various intruders ranging from naive germs to the most sophisticated viruses. It acts as an intrusion detection and prevention system (IDPS) for the human body and detects anomalies that make the body deviate from its normal behavior. This inspired researchers t...

Intrusion detection and/or prevention systems (IDPS) represent an important line of defense against the variety of attacks that can compromise the security and well functioning of an enterprise information system. IDPSes can be network or host-based and can collaborate in order to provide better detections of malicious traffic. Although several IDP...

The accuracy of detecting intrusions within an intrusion detection network (IDN) depends on the efficiency of collaboration between the peer intrusion detection systems (IDSes) as well as the security itself of the IDN against insider threats. In this paper, we study host-based IDNs and introduce a Dirichlet-based model to measure the level of trus...

This paper presents an autonomic load balancing algorithm (ALBA) which enhances resource allocation in wireless local area networks (WLAN). ALBA offers autonomic management capabilities to access points that ensure the accommodation of more user traffic and an overall network capacity improvement compared to default signal strength based connectivi...

The accuracy of detecting an intrusion within a network of intrusion detection systems (IDSes) depends on the eciency of collab- oration between member IDSes. The security itself within this network is an additional concern that needs to be addressed. In this paper, we present a trust-based framework for secure and eectiv e collaboration within an...

In this paper, we contribute on the service-driven management of quality of service and user access in wireless corporate networks. We propose a Service-Level Agreement (SLA) oriented nomadism management architecture with a top-down vision starting by the specification of company objectives and going down to device-level configurations. We define a...

The widespread success of the WLAN technology raises the need for the efficient management of the different access points and the associated wireless devices, especially when multimedia and other QoS demanding applications are employed. In this paper we propose an autonomic load balancing mechanism for WLAN networks and test its applicability for a...

With the increased network size and diversity, and the proliferation in applications and services, the network service providers are faced with a flood of information from many levels of their network and service operations, often in uncorrelated forms. At the same time, the focus of network services is shifting from managing networks to managing s...

Dans cet article, nous proposons un système de gestion autonomique des réseaux 802.11 à l’aide d’un algorithme de répartition de charge baptisé ALBA. L’idée fondamentale et originale d’ALBA est sa capacité à réorganiser localement le réseau et répartir dynamiquement et au mieux sur une zone les stations sur les points d’accès, afin d’assurer l’effi...

Intelligent and dynamic management is essential for improving WLAN efficiency, especially when multimedia and other QoS demanding applications are employed. In this paper, we propose a Recursive Autonomic Load Balancing Algorithm (RALBA)for WLANs and test its applicability for a VoIP over WLAN (VoWLAN) use case. A load metric is used to identify ho...

In this article, we focus on the service-driven management of quality of service and user access in wireless corporate networks. We propose a service-level agreement (SLA) oriented nomadism management architecture with a top-down vision starting by the specification of company objectives and going down to device-level configurations. We define an a...

The widespread success of the WLAN technology raises the need for the efficient management of the different access points and the associated wireless devices, especially when multimedia and other QoS demanding applications are employed. In this paper we propose an autonomic load balancing mechanism for WLAN networks and test its applicability for a...

This paper presents a systematic approach to business and policy driven refinement. It also discusses an implementation of an application-hosting service level agreement (SLA) use case. We make use of a simple application hosting SLA template, for which we derive a low-level policy-based service level specification (SLS). The SLS policy set is then...

This paper traces the history of policy-based management and how it evolved from the first security models dating back to the late 1960's until today's more elaborate frameworks, languages, and policy-based management tools. The focus will be on providing a synthesized chronicle of the evolution of ideas and research trends rather than on surveying...

This thesis contributes to the business-driven management of IT systems at different levels. First, a management framework that links together business goals, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and policy operation is proposed. Then existing policy and SLA specification formalisms are investigated and a specification for SLAs that is policy-driven is...

This article presents PS, a policy simulator tool intended to serve in the validation and performance evaluation of policy-based management solutions. PS is a discrete process-based simulation environment which allows the specification of all major components required for a policy-based management solution. These include the ability to specify mana...

We consider whether the off-line compilation of a set of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) into low-level management policies can lead to the runtime maximization of the overall business profit for a service provider. Using a simple Web application hosting SLA template for a utility service provider, we derive low-level QoS management policies and va...

In this paper, we specify and implement a framework for utility driven generation and scheduling of management actions based on Business context and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). SLAs are compiled into low level management policies; as well as sets of performance metrics and utility functions. These are subsequently used to drive the scheduling...

In this paper, we introduce a business aware framework for the policy-based management of IT Systems and its application to utility computing environments. The framework couples two main subsystems on top of an IETF-like policy-based resource control layer. They are MBO (Management by Business Objectives) where the decision ability supported by ana...

In this work, we focus on Service Level Agreement "SLA" driven nomadism management in wireless corporate networks. We adopt a novel top down approach in dealing with this problem. We aim at automatic equipment configuration based on high level company objectives and strategies for nomadism. For that, we propose a service-oriented management archite...

In this work we propose GXLA, a language for the specification of Service Level Agreements (SLA). GXLA represents the implementation of the Generalized Service Level Agreement (GSLA) information model we proposed in a previous work. It supports multi-party service relationships through a role-based mechanism. It is intended to catch up the complex...

In this paper, we propose a service-driven model for structuring WLANs into overlay networks of interacting wireless management communities. A wireless management community (WMC) is composed of a set of parties and is governed by a charter named the WMC-SLA (service level agreement). A WMC constitutes the basic unit of management upon which install...

We introduce a Business Driven Framework (BDMF) for the Management of IT Systems in general and Utility Computing Environments in particular. The framework builds on the enhancement of the currently state-of-art IETF policy architecture by making it SLA and Business level aware. SLA awareness is assured through the GSLA, which is an advanced model...

utility computing, management by business objectives, service level agreement (SLA), service level management (SLM), policy based management (PBM) In this paper, we introduce a Business Driven Framework for the Management of Utility Computing Environments (BDMF). The framework couples two main subsystems on top of an IETF-like policy-based resource...

In this work, we will focus on the work undertaken in the specification of policies, the different notations developed, and how policies are deployed within a managed system. We will motivate, analyze, and classify all major existing policy notations through several criteria and try to consider the consistent merging of their strengths into a more...

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) have a very important role in network security. Many NIDS evasion techniques as well as solutions were proposed in the literature. Supporting stateful signatures is a very critical function in a signature-based NIDS because many multi-stage attacks can only be detected by tracking multiple rules (signature...

Service Level Agreements for service quality assurances are being a hot and complex research topic in both the network management and eCommerce fields. Research in IT Networks and systems management is evolving from device and system component centered management towards a service oriented systems management paradigm. The new entity that is gaining...