Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The use of social networks, mobile applications, cloud-based services and Internet of Things devices is rapidly changing the computing paradigm, enabling a brand new technological landscape. To fully take advantage of what this new paradigm offers, bold new innovations are needed to address key issues: privacy, security, efficiency and scalability have been some of the top concerns in this new connected world. None of the current systems were designed with the volume, connectivity, or usage that we require today. Part of this proposal focuses on building next generation prevention and detection systems. These systems will provide novel and comprehensive automated monitoring and access control of systems that utilize the emerging Software-Defined Networking technology. We are planning to design lightweight, standalone, pieces of software that can run on different platforms, and for which tasks can be moved seamlessly from one device to another. We will also build a trust framework for large scale systems, that is secure and takes into account information from various levels and nodes in the system. In recent years, there has been a gradual shift to software, cloud-based storage, with some estimates claiming that more than 80% of all of our information will be remotely stored by 2020. Another part of this proposal focuses on smart, software-based distributed storage systems that can be easily configured based on different metrics and performance requirements. This solution will protect the confidentiality of data using strong encryption algorithms, while providing for a superior functionality and scalability. This project will secure the privacy of people's data without limiting their access to the technology they have come to love. This project also allows for training of HQP for an emerging industry in which there is currently an acute demand for these highly specialized expertise.