
Ricardo M. CzeksterAston University · School of Computer Science and Digital Technologies, Department of Software Engineering and Cybersecurity
Ricardo M. Czekster
Computer Science PhD
Researching dependability plus cyber-security in critical infrastructure.
About
99
Publications
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Introduction
Ricardo M. Czekster works in the intersection of performance evaluation, simulation, and system modeling. Ricardo has received distinguished honors and awards for his researches throughout the years. Under the doctorate, he was awarded two visiting research invitations: one at Grenoble/France, on LIG (with Dr Bruno Gaujal and Dr Florence Perronnin) and another on LFCS at Edinburgh/Scotland (working with Dr Jane Hillston and Dr Stephen Gilmore). He was a visiting researcher in Siemens Corporate Research (Princeton/USA) where he conducted modelling and simulation with practical research results with Dr Alberto Avritzer and Dr Kishor Trivedi. For the past years, Dr Czekster has directed his attention towards high-level modelling and evaluation of systems.
Additional affiliations
July 2010 - December 2010
Siemens Corporate Research, Princeton, United States
Position
- Researcher
Education
July 2010 - December 2010
Siemens Corporate Research
Field of study
- Performance Testing
March 2006 - March 2010
March 2004 - January 2006
Publications
Publications (99)
Software architects reason about systems according to the set of relevant quality attributes to observe aligning it to their operational objectives. They inspect properties such as usability, performance, maintainability, scalability, and security, to mention a few, to select over different design styles to maximise systems’ capabilities altogether...
Advancements in Medical Internet of Things (MIoT) technology ease remote health monitoring and effective management of medical devices. However, these developments also expose systems to novel cyber security risks as sophisticated threat actors exploit infrastructure vulnerabilities to access sensitive data or deploy malicious software, threatening...
Digital Twin (DT) technologies promise to remove cyber-physical barriers in systems and services and provide seamless management of distributed resources effectively. Ideally, full-fledged instantiations of DT offer bi-directional features for physical-virtual representations, tackling data governance, risk assessment, security and privacy protecti...
DevOps (development and operations), has significantly changed the way to overcome deficiencies for delivering high-quality software to production environments. Past years witnessed an increased interest in embedding DevOps with cybersecurity in an approach dubbed secure DevOps. However, as the practices and guidance mature, teams must consider the...
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) that exhibit stochastic behaviours and uncertainties can be modelled in various formalisms, that can be analysed and validated by model-checking tools. PRISM stands out as a robust probabilistic model checker but faces challenges in managing numerous models with diverse parameters, leading to redundancy and maintenance...
As technology advances and AI becomes embedded and accepted into everyday life, the risk of cyberattacks by adversaries increases. These cyberattacks are ubiquitous affecting both businesses and individuals alike, and causing financial and reputational loss as a result. Numerous cyberattack analysis methods are available to analyse the risk of cybe...
Understanding the development and execution of a cyberattack is intrinsic in its prevention and mitigation. A suitable cyberattack analysis method can be utilised in analysing cyberattacks. However, not every analysis method can be utilised for analysing every type of cyberattack due to the specific aim, strategy, requirements and skills of an anal...
This report contains a brief analysis of MoKMaSD and DataMod symposia that happens each year since 2012. It describes its evolution over time towards more model-based and data-driven approaches, listing the papers' abstracts, keywords and references for all 87 published work. Additional Key Words and Phrases: MoKMaSD, DataMod, symposia, data analys...
Intracellular leucine aminopeptidases (PepA) are metalloproteases from the family M17. These enzymes catalyze peptide bond cleavage, removing N-terminal residues from peptide and protein substrates, with consequences for protein homeostasis and quality control. While general mechanistic studies using model substrates have been conducted on PepA enz...
Modern medical devices connected to public and private networks require additional layers of communication and management to effectively and securely treat remote patients. Wearable medical devices, for example, can detect position, movement, and vital signs; such data help improve the quality of care for patients, even when they are not close to a...
The pervasiveness of smart devices, i.e., components equipped with feedback loops, sensing, and telecommunications for remote management, bring interesting research opportunities for incorporating contextual cybersecurity information through cyber threat intelligence (CTI). This approach enriches analysis by aggregating contextual information gathe...
The file shows all the matches of the National Brazilian Football Championship ("Brasileirão"), from 2003 to 2022 (20 years worth of data).
Mind that beginning in 2006 the model followed 20 teams altogether, before that, a different number of teams participated the event: in 2003 (24 teams & 46 matches), in 2004 (24 teams & 46 matches), in 2005 (22...
Active buildings can be briefly described as smart buildings with distributed and renewable energy resources able to energise other premises in their neighbourhood. As their energy capacity is significant, they can provide ancillary services to the traditional power grid. As such, they can be a worthy target of cyber-attacks potentially more devast...
Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) is practical real-world information that is collected with the purpose of assessing threats in cyber-physical systems (CPS). A practical notation for sharing CTI is STIX. STIX offers facilities to create, visualise and share models; however, even a moderately simple project can be represented in STIX as a quite compl...
This book is a gentle introduction to Markov Chains for programmers. It describes the basics of the formalism and demonstrate numerical methods using the C Programming Language (presented as 'coding challenges' for programming enthusiasts). The code is then validated using MATLAB and CTMC/DTMC models in the PRISM Statistical Model Checker tool. The...
System-wide level integration encompassing several layers of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) intermingled with computing and energy components is directing designs around the globe. Faster, responsive, cleaner, and greener mixed with secure operations mandate system operators and smart building stakeholders to reconsider l...
Recent cyber-attacks in critical infrastructures have highlighted the importance of investigating how to improve Smart-Grids (SG) resiliency. In the future, it is envisioned that grid connected micro-grids would have the ability of operating in 'islanded mode’ in the event of a grid-level failure. In this work, we propose a method for unfolding agi...
The technology integrated in modern smart infrastructures makes them vulnerable to malicious cyber attacks and misuse of information systems. Active Buildings (AB) are no exception. AB implement the vision of 'buildings as power stations', aiming for operational efficiency in generation, storage, release, and conservation of energy collaboratively...
It contains the abstract and a brief analysis of all papers from the Practical Applications of Stochastic Modelling (PASM) workshop series between 2004 to 2019.
Security officers employ adversarial modelling techniques to drive analysis over complex attack surfaces. One technique for modelling safety and security is Attack Trees (AT) that uses logic gates to address the likelihood of malicious actions and outcomes. However, attack progression over time is not considered in AT analysis. To cope with this, t...
Cyber-security incident metrics carries several difficulties to leverage for yielding quantitative outcomes. When compared to straightforward dependability metrics such as the Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) or the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), the computation of the Mean Time to Compromise (MTTC) gets blurred when assessing its actual value. Reasons var...
Electric Vehicles (EVs) can help alleviate our reliance on fossil fuels for transport and electricity systems. However, charging millions of EV batteries requires management to prevent overloading the electricity grid and minimise costly upgrades that are ultimately paid for by consumers.
Managed chargers, such as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) chargers, al...
Electric Vehicles (EVs) can help alleviate our reliance on fossil fuels for transport and electricity systems. However, charging millions of EV batteries requires management to prevent overloading the electricity grid and minimise costly upgrades that are ultimately paid for by consumers. Managed chargers, such as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) chargers, al...
Philanthropic hospitals in Brazil are in great part funded by the government and are daily accessed by a large portion of the population. As the Brazilian economy faces deep cuts in healthcare, managers are adjusting budgets and focusing on less expensive alternatives such as process improvements. Hospitals are even more impacted by the recent COVI...
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) plus energy are the enabling technology of modern power systems also known as the Smart Grid (SG). A SG may consist of thousands of interconnected components communicating and exchanging data across layers that stretch beyond technical capabilities , for instance, markets and customer intera...
The excess of components belonging to Smart Grids (SG) compel the use of combined analysis tools. There is a need to abstract these infrastructures so modellers and managers usually resort to co-simulation. It integrates and synchronises different simulation engines coupled into one global solution amenable for analysis. Over the years several fram...
Tackling cyber-physical security properly is mandatory in today's critical infrastructures and services provision. It wraps applications and solutions with cybersecurity protections that safeguard stakeholders across levels. However, documentation on the subject is extensive, requiring additional effort to grasp introductory notions or learn what i...
The Smart Grid (SG) is a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) considered a critical infrastructure divided into cyber (software) and physical (hardware) counterparts that complement each other. It is responsible for timely power provision wrapped by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for handling bi-directional energy flows in electric power g...
The Smart Grid (SG) is a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) considered a critical infrastructure divided into cyber (software) and physical (hardware) counterparts that complement each other. It is responsible for timely power provision wrapped by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for handling bi-directional energy flows in electric power g...
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are present in many settings addressing a myriad of purposes. Examples are Internet-of-Things (IoT) or sensing software embedded in appliances or even specialised meters that measure and respond to electricity demands in smart grids. Due to their pervasive nature, they are usually chosen as recipients for larger scope c...
Inter-networked control systems make smart buildings increasingly efficient but can lead to severe operational disruptions and infrastructure damage. It is vital the security state of smart buildings is properly assessed so that thorough and cost effective risk management can be established. This paper uniquely reports on an actual risk assessment...
Philanthropic hospitals in Brazil are in great part-funded by the government and are daily accessed by a large part of the population. As the Brazilian economy faces deep cuts in healthcare, managers are forced to adjust budgets and invest more in process improvements. Hospitals are even more impacted by the recent COVID-19 pandemic with widespread...
The Brazilian Championship A Series (BCAS, or "Brasileirão") is played on its current format since 2003 using cross matches encompassing 20 teams. Several statistical analysis are carried out by professionals and amateurs with the intention of predicting the next winner in advance. It is usual to use team's historical data as input for models where...
Systematic Literature Review is a widely adopted methodology to select relevant research in digital libraries using specific steps. Unlike a survey which is a comprehensive literature report on the body of works pertaining a eld, an SLR aims to select particular works according to pre-defined, specific criteria. In an SLR, relevant meta-data is ext...
This is an ongoing effort to define quantitative Performance Evaluation (PE), written to clarify the understanding of some concepts on terminology thus avoiding ambiguity in daily efforts when investigating systems characteristics. For a glossary of terms and definitions provided by standard bodies, it is highly suggested to peruse information offe...
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are present in many settings addressing a myriad of purposes. Examples are Internet-of-Things (IoT) or sensing software embedded in appliances or even specialised meters that measure and respond to electricity demands in smart grids. Due to their pervasive nature, they are usually chosen as recipients for larger scope c...
This is an introduction to Stochastic Automata Networks (SAN) using the GTAexpress tool. It explains the Markovian based formalism and allows users to model and evaluate systems where parallelism and concurrency are present.
The presentation explains the main modelling primitives present in SAN as well as how to use the tool to compile and solve mo...
This is a presentation about modelling and evaluating dispersed software development teams across the globe. This presentation has a close relation to the following work: https://doi.org/10.1145/2955093
Presentation for the paper entitled "Restructuring tensor products to enhance the numerical solution of structured Markov Chains".
Modelling and Simulation are inexpensive and computationally efficient manners to analyze virtually any system. The technique has attracted the attention of cross-disciplinary practitioners due to easiness when abstracting systems to models and its fast and reliable solution mechanisms for assessing performance. The present work discusses a metamod...
We propose an educational framework to combine different disciplines such as Software Engineering, Operating Systems, and Simulation to teach project management, modular programming, and system decomposition to students. We present guidelines for the framework implementation and insights as to how plan simulations of virtualized operating systems....
The choice of virtualized solutions (e.g. the use of virtual machines over physical machines) for systems execution under different contexts is a commonly used approached for several domain applications. The possibility to abstract entire platforms, infrastructures, or software as a service has become a valid technique for application execution usi...
The present paper addresses the transformation of modeling primitives in structured Markovian based formalisms such as Queueing Networks, Stochastic Petri Nets, Performance Evaluation Process Algebra, and Stochastic Automata Networks. Since all of those formalisms share the same underneath Markov Chain, there is a formal correspondence that yields...
This is a model that should be opened by the Decisor tool - download it at https://github.com/czekster/Decisor/releases
This is a model that should be opened by the Decisor tool - download it at https://github.com/czekster/Decisor/releases
The applications requirements are becoming more rigorous, demanding the execution of concurrent tasks that must also take into account modularity and flexibility. A fundamental part of the operating system development concerns the implementation of scheduling algorithms. In an embedded system context, it is essential to consider the scheduling algo...
Selecting ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software is crucial to enhance productivity because it provides high-quality services for end users. The choice of an ERP is a problem that should undertake deeper scrutiny. For example, several criteria are usually present , having different tradeoffs. Analysts and managers, when deciding which ERP to a...
Addressing consistent and reliable decision making are crucial activities when choosing seemingly related alternatives for a set of criteria. Models and methods for aiding decisions such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were developed to handle quantified assessments of quality attributes, usually intangible and numerically hard to cope. We intr...
There is an unquestionable need to improve healthcare processes across all levels of care in order to optimise the use of resources whilst guaranteeing high quality care to patients. However, healthcare processes are generally very complex and have to be fully understood before enhancement suggestions can be made. Modelling with widely used notatio...
Este artigo foca na análise do processo de faturamento de contas hospitalares de internação, em uma investigação que combina os temas gestão de processos de negócio (BPM) e simulação de eventos discretos (DES) para apoiar iniciativas de melhorias em processos de negócio em hospitais filantrópicos. Para condução da fase de mapeamento utilizou-se a n...
This is the presentation for DataMod 2018 conference held at Toulouse, France on June/2018.
Resumo: Este artigo apresenta o Ambiente Virtual de Aprendizagem Experimental (AVAE) utilizado em uma disciplina do Curso de Licenciatura em Computação para potencializar a construção de conhecimentos na área. O ambiente possibilitou que os estudantes atuassem como professores responsáveis por turmas virtuais e, concomitantemente, como estudantes d...
Software que define um modelo decisório usando o método AHP - Analytic Hierarchy Process para situações multicriteriais com diferentes alternativas. O seu uso é amplo, por exemplo, para decidir qual pessoa contratar, qual é o melhor fornecedor de matérias-prima ou qual candidato votar na próxima eleição.
Healthcare involves complex decision making from planning to resource management. Resources in hospitals are usually allocated by experienced managers, however, due to an inherent process complexity, decisions are surrounded by uncertainties, variabilities, and constraints. Information Systems must be robust enough to provide support to stakeholder...
No Brasil, o Total Quality Management (TQM), passou a exigir das empresas maior eficiência e, consequentemente, maior rapidez e assertividade nas tomadas de decisões. Desta maneira, surge a necessidade de se empregar métodos de auxílio à decisão tais como o Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). O presente artigo é de caráter exploratório e tem por obje...
Measuring productivity in globally distributed projects is crucial to improve team performance. These measures often display information on whether a given project is moving forward or starts to demonstrate undesired behaviors. In this paper we are interested in showing how analytical models could deliver insights for the behavior of specific distr...
Nowadays, security concerns are becoming extremely important as attacks and intrusions to systems and computers networks increase significantly. Different measures and countermeasures are employed to guarantee server security as well as new techniques and tools. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) are expert software broadly used by system administr...
Network-on-Chip (NoC) is a power architecture that emerged to solve communication issues present in modern Systems-on-Chip (SoCs). NoC based architectures are very scalable and offer high levels of communication parallelism, among other features. Every efficient NoC implementation requires several design steps to accomplish indices of performance....
A virtualização através do uso de máquinas virtuais sobre máquinas físicas, para executar diferentes sistemas em diferentes domínios de aplicação tem sido uma abordagem comumente adotada em diferentes contextos. A possibilidade de se abstrair plataformas, infraestrutura ou software como um serviço passou a ser uma técnica válida para executar siste...
A tomada de decisão não pode ser centrada em apenas uma perspectiva. O problema de decisão multicritério avalia múltiplos objetivos, de forma integrada. Em um problema de decisão existe pelo menos duas alternativas, para o decisor efetuar uma escolha. Para que uma empresa escolha seus clientes de forma adequada, ela estabelece critérios para realiz...
A escolha de soluções virtualizadas para executar diferentes sistemas em diferentes contextos tem sido uma abordagem comumente adotada para uma gama de aplicações. O uso de ambientes virtualizados é relevante e crucial, entretanto, em muitos casos estas tecnologias são escolhidas sem verificação prévia de desempenho ou outros atributos não funciona...
A escolha de soluções virtualizadas para executar diferentes sistemas em diferentes contextos tem sido uma abordagem comumente adotada para uma gama de aplicações. O uso de ambientes virtualizados é relevante e crucial, entretanto, em muitos casos estas tecnologias são escolhidas sem verificação prévia de desempenho ou outros atributos não funciona...
Sistema de Informação que trabalha com dados do CAGED (Cadastro Geral de Empregados e Desempregados) do Ministério do Trabalho.
The emergence of wireless networks has contributed to a growing number of studies and protocols regarding its performance and reliability requirements, among others. Several issues have to be considered when deploying such devices under harsh environmental conditions. These issues often force the designer to adopt decisions that are usually difficu...
Software aging and rejuvenation research has shown that the application of approaches for software aging modeling, monitoring, and rejuvenation has the potential to significantly increase software resilience. In this chapter, we present an overview of important analytical models and measurement approaches for software aging and rejuvenation. We sta...
Numerical analysis of Markovian models is relevant for performance evaluation and probabilistic analysis of systems’ behavior from several fields in science and engineering. These models can be represented in a compact fashion using Kronecker algebra. The Vector-Descriptor Product (VDP) is the key operation to obtain stationary and transient soluti...
Avaliar o desempenho de sistemas é um ponto-chave para detectar gargalos de execução, possíveis otimizações e, sobretudo para prover aplicações com alto grau de confiabilidade e desempenho. Muitas são as formas para se avaliar o desempenho de sistemas, por exemplo,monitoração, medições, simulações e modelagem analítica. Muitas vezes, não se dispõe...
Performance testing involves knowledgement not only about the application to be tested, its usage, and the execution infrastructure; it also requires understanding of the performance test automation tools employed – scripting, monitoring and configuration details. Performance script generation is highly technology-dependent, with great variations f...