INFORMATION SECURITY IN COMPUTER HARDWARE AND NETWORKING

QUESTION

Assessment Case Study

The following describes an existing company’s proposed paperboard production facility, which must be placed under computer control.  The company prides itself on providing a Just-In-Time (JIT) service for its customers.  The company also intends to operate on a JIT basis for both ordering and manufacture.

A single paperboard manufacturing machine operates by gluing together two or three layers of paper using a solvent-based adhesive to produce a sheet of paperboard.  A layer of paper is supplied from a paper station. Each machine has a maximum of three paper stations. The glued layers are pressed together between a pair of rollers.  The paperboard can then pass through either, a slitter and stacker or a roll-up facility.

A machine utilises four standard thicknesses of paper and the finished thickness of the paperboard is a function of the number of layers (two or three) and the paper type used for each layer.  Maintenance of paperboard thickness is paramount as cardboard is rated in terms of g/m².

Paper is supplied on 2000m rolls.  The company limits its paperboard manufacture to rolls of paperboard between 200m and 6000m.  A machine requires a minimum of 50m of paper to be present on any roller and in addition the first 100m of product is scrapped.  Only rolls of 350m upwards are economical to use.

A machine has an automatic paper splice facility that can be used to change rolls of paper.  Paper rolls can be changed at any time.  Although splicing occurs on-line, the machine must slow down from its normal operating speed of 200m/min to 60m/min.  Each of the three available paper stations has a position for two rolls of paper, one generally in use and the other waiting to be used or waiting to be removed after use.  An operator changes the rolls of paper manually using a forklift truck.

If a customer requires the board to be laminated this is done by coating it with a UV curable acrylic based clear varnish at a single coating station.  The company has three paperboard machines and the output of any of these can be diverted through the coating station.  This station also has a slitter stacker and roll-up facility.  Laminated paperboard is rated as g/m² of cardboard and laminate thickness in microns.

Process operators must be able to monitor the health of each sub-system in the production process and view current production status.

A sales team based at a remote site receives the orders for the paperboard by phone or e-mail.  It is intended that a computer system will be used to schedule production to maximise profitability and at the same time ensure that order deadlines are met.   The resultant data from paperboard orders must be made available to the paperboard machines for scheduling of work and to other departments such as paper ordering, paper handling and staffing.  The sales team must be able to offer their customers delivery dates based on the current production capacity.  Senior managers must also be able to view current and historical production data in order to guide the long-term business strategy.

SOLUTION

Introduction

The computers are in general used to reduce the burden of the human efforts by automating the process of work, designing the procedure, connecting the different people and hardware, and producing an architecture which can maximize the profits. The computers help in making the use of hardware and available infrastructure, in an efficient way so that the uses of resources are in an optimized way. Then, there is the advent of networking.(Forozuon, 2012)

The networking helps in bringing the distributed system together. A man sitting in Alaska can have the entire world at his tips through networks. The portals are up and working round the clock. The cloud computing makes the virtual architecture for development, storage of data, sharing of knowledge possible without installing single software of your system.

The production of paper boards is such an industry, where we would be exploring the scope of computing and networking. The paper industry endeavors to make the requirements of its clients fulfilled just-in time. There has to be an architecture which makes the use of the best available resources to make maximum profits out of its resources. The sales team of the industry sits at different places. They receive the orders from the client through phones and other sources. They need a system to be created so that the inputs of the clients are captured in the system. Then the system would implement a possible plan or algorithm so that there is a maximum utilization of the board making machines. There is also need that the deadlines of the clients are fulfilled.

The data of the board making system, the schedules, the deadlines, and the consumption of the resources must be also available to the management team. These details would help the management team to make decisions and forecast the future requirements. The analysis is, done here to make the utilization of the computers and the networks in such a way, so as to achieve the above targets.

The Strategy of automating the work

The first step to achieve the given objective is to install an intra-network technology over the whole system. The intranetworking technology makes you sure that all the systems are in the safe hands, with no intrusion of those trying to bring down your system or trying to steal your information important data. The bugs and the virus would have hard times if your intranet is secure.

The intranet is a network, which make you network private. You can use any of the intranetworking technology like TCP/IP, NetBIOS, etc. The cisco based networking devices like routers, wireless routers, L-3 Switches, and many more would help you make your network possible. The systems would need to be segregated into sub-networks. The sub-networking not only helps in avoiding the mess of a large network but also helps in keeping different departments separate.

There should be a proxy server which should be handling all the requests of connections between the systems. The proxy server caches all the requests coming from the users, and delivers them through a rule based system. It also keeps the unwanted attacks from the external network at bay. The organization is treated as a DMZ (the demilitarized zone) in the architecture, and there works a firewall between. (Forozoun,2010)This was about setting intranet at one place, like at the production, or at a place where the sales team is sitting. This set-up has been proved very safe within an organization, but the question is how to set-up a connection between the two internetworks, separated by cities? The answer is a VPN (virtual private network).

A VPN is a connection between the two intranets, which tunnels through the TCP layer. As the name suggests it is a private and this uses public networks, this comes cheap too. Another technology for almost the same purpose is the Leased lines. These form a WAN (wide area network) for the connecting the different parts of the business together.

Thus, we analyzed the networking in connecting the sales team with production, the production team with the management, and the other departments, making up the whole business running in coherence with each other. This way we setup a safe network. Another task is to make a scheduling system.

Shaping up the scheduling System

Here, we would talk about different scheduling system, their pros and cons, their feasibility of the system, the computational load, the time constraints and still many others.

Before talking about the Scheduling system, let us thoroughly analyze the processes that make up the system, after all the system has to make a best arrangement of the processes so as to make a bridge between the slow and the fast processes. There can be serial processes and the parallel ones. The basic processes which should be taken care are:

• The paper gluing machine works by gluing two or more papers together.
• A single paper gluing machine is helped by three paper stations, constantly feeding it with papers.
• The layers of paper glued together are moved, though a pair of rollers.
• The paper is moved through the splitter, stacker or roll-up facilities
• The maintenance of paper is a big issue as the paper boards designed as requested must have certain thickness and weight per unit length.
• Only the paper rolls of length greater than 350 m are useful. So, clearly the gluing machine should be fed with paper if the length goes lower than the aforesaid mark.
• Although the machine has automatic splice facility, the speed is slowed down by thrice the original speed.
• Each paper machine has two rolls of paper, one which is in use and the other one is idle and the used one has to be changed manually.(sciecedirect.com,2011)

So, we have got through all the processes which make up the whole system. Now let us have some algorithms.

First-in First out

This is the system which works like a queue. The first come first served basis. The work assigned to the next process is only when the previous one is finished. So, the throughput may be low in such a system. The TAT (turn around time), the response time is quite high in such as system. The system may be un-responsive for any sharp changes. There is lack of prioritization in the system. The system can work in a sequential system, like the one in which the data flows in sequence, to be acted upon by the other processes. This can’t work when there are processes which do not end. The most of the modern systems need to be served asynchronously. Such a system can’t fulfill the deadline.

Next, we described another algorithm.

The Fixed Priority System

The processor or the scheduler in this kind of algorithm arranges the whole process with the different processes assigned a fixed priority. The turn around time is neither very large nor it can be less. The processes with higher priorities are served first (called preemption).The system can make up for the deadlines. If the higher priority processes come frequently then there can be a situation in which the low priority process might get neglected and suffer.

Round-Robin Algorithm

The round algorithm offers a certain time unit or period, or you may say cycles per second, to every process. There is a high overhead over the scheduler if the processes have lower number of time period. This system is not based on prioritization it can have higher waiting times. There is no process which may suffer because of low priority. There are higher waiting times as the priority concept is not here.

The Multilevel Scheduling

The processes are divided into groups with similarities like those with front-end activities and the other with background processes. This similar to the preemption algorithm or the high priority algorithm but here the criteria of the division of the processes need not to be the priority of the processes.

The Smallest Time algorithm

This is the system in which the systems looks for the shortest process and always keeps it remaining next in the queue, that is the shortest job is up in the queue. This system needs preemptive calculations. This brings an overhead over the scheduler. The system is takes least time to finish. The computational needs are increased. There is no constraint of time.

Comparing the Algorithms

Thus, far we have analyzed the possible algorithms for the scheduler to work upon depending on the computational requirements, the constraints of time that is if the deadline would be fulfilled. There can be many other requirements too .The best algorithm to be chosen is upon the trade-offs. All the algorithms talked above do not make a best system; each one has something good or bad. The final shape of the algorithm is on the shoulders of the developer who is going to implement the best among the all. May be few good things can be taken from them all.

Then there are the interfaces that need to be designed for the systems delivered at the production. The softwares designed for the scheduler must guide the operations people to control the system .They should be aware of using the systems deign made for the scheduler. They would be the ones who can best tell the way scheduler should handle the operations.

The Network Design

We talked a little about the network security system that can make up the possible network system. Its time we discuss about them in bit more detail and then go for a possible blue print of the whole network design of the paper board industry. A few security protocols are as under:

SSH

The Secure shell has replaced many protocols like the telnet, remote login protocols the RCP, the FTP which is the file transfer protocol used to copy the files from other servers. This just a replacement for the above stated shell technologies. There is great chance that an eavesdropper identifies the password used by you during authentication in the protocols which the SSH replaced. So, this not a safe mechanism of providing security to the user, to do telnet, FTP,   etc. The passwords are transmitted as plain text over the network. So, the organizations should disable telnet, ftp, and remote login facilities and replace them with SSH, SFTP and SCP.

It is an application layer protocol, which makes use of TCP only. It uses public key cryptography to prove authentication purpose. It should be best used when there is some file transfer, it is simple and secure.

SCP is a sub-protocol of SSH. It simply provides a tunnel through SSH. This requires an SCP command to run on the client machine.

SFTP is again another sub-protocol over SSH.As the name suggests it should be a secure version of FTP is not certainly the fact. The resemblances end with names. It is based on the TCP connection. The file transfer over STP is bit complex. The files are sent in chunks of data, bit-by-bit, with the correction bits sent aback with them. So, you do not get entire files at once, but a part of it in every time you send the request.

TLS

The transport layer security and like SSH it also runs on the transport connection protocol. It is secure and reliable. It has been specially designed to prevent the user to eavesdropping, message duplicity and tampering of the data. There are two level authentications over here: mutual authentication and the server authentication.(windowssecurity.com,2012)

There is authentication of the equipment and the server by one another. The user equipment verifies the server certificates and the server validates the user equipment certificates. Only upon the sharing of the mutual certificates and their authentication, during the session the user system and server would communicates with each other.

You must have seen the HTTPS sessions; this is also done by the SSL, which is used by the TLS. The TLS is also aware of the NAT traversal in this layer. NAT stands for the network address translation. The private networks use the private IP addresses, when these private systems come into contact of the public network there has to be the translated into public IP address, this is the objective behind the Nat transversal.

VoIP the voice over the internet protocol works over the TLS. The VoIP is the protocol which provides the transfer of voice over the Internet protocol with TLS acting as a secure gateway. The VPN facility is already discussed after the introduction to the topic.

The security algorithm is one of the safest, but it has also few disadvantages that some of the browsers are not capable of the certificates validation done it. This adds extra over-head to the system computations and the memory requirements, which may be seen as the heavy downside of its robust services provided.

IPSec

As can be deduced from its name, it is called as internet protocol security. It is a protocol which runs on the IP layer. It provides user a mechanism to encapsulate the IP packets to provide confidentiality, a secure passage of the information, and a method of easy authentication. The IPSec is for those browsers who cannot authenticate the server and the user equipment authentication. This does not add any overhead to the system, in terms of extra computation and the memory requirements as in case of the TLS authentication. It also do not mandate the use of PKI as in case of the TLS Security.

There is an added benefit with this as it protects the based on the network layer, the transport layer securities can still be used here. Thus the system capable can use both the protocols.

There are some disadvantages to the system. The TSL is more proffered by the users. This is also not friendly with NAT (network address translation) configured networks. The User Datagram protocol (UDP) does not allow the IPSec, as it has a different packing of the frames from the data link layer as the datagram packets.

The Encryption Algorithms

The process of converting the piece of information into a encoded design is the work of encryption algorithms. An Encryption algorithm makes the use of a public key, used for encryption and the decryption of the data. The different encryption algorithms use a variety of length and the type of the keys. There are symmetric encryption methods and the asymmetric methods of encryption. In the symmetric encryption method the single key is used to encrypt the data and the same key is used for decrypting the data received at the client side. This becomes a problem as there may happen eavesdrop to decode the password transmitted between the sever and the client or peer to peer.

The other encryption method is the asymmetric one in which there is a public key and a private key and the keys are used by the different parts of the algorithm to encrypt the data and decrypt the same.

That’s a brief discussion about the security algorithms the pros and cons of the each. In the beginning of the discussions, we had discussed about the referral of the data files from the sales and the production team so that the management of the paper board industry can take decisions regarding the business requirements .There can be the data regarding the various types: the sales data, the requirements data of the clients , the deadlines data, weather the production was able to meet the deadlines of the clients were met by the production, weather the production had idle time, the feedback received from the clients about the output, and many more questions like this.

The management team should make a note of all the facts regarding the production so as to scale the current requirements and the scope of future prospects. There are several database and the business intelligence tools which make the monitoring of the production as an easy job. The production is shown as the pie-charts, histograms, tabular data etc. The forecasts of the future production can also be reduced from these graphs too. The efficiency of the scheduler should also be calculated from the increase in the growth if resulted from the new implementation of the new scheduling algorithms. That’s why we need that the smooth and secure connection should be there between the sales team and the production and the production team and the management.

Conclusion   

As, a result of so much of discussion with regards to the hardware and networking requirements of the paper board industry. There is a need of design of the scheduler system, so that the processes involved in the production are automated in such a way to produce maximum benefits of the recourses deployed for the production. We discussed the algorithms of the scheduling activity. The best algorithm is the one which causes less computational burden, low time constraints, maximum production and meeting the deadlines.

There are also required that need of secure and hassle free communication between the systems. There can be a scenario in which the sales team uses the interface design of the software of scheduling, over a remote desktop and the scheduling batch stats in the background. There is also a well need of training to the production team so that they can function according to the requirements of the scheduler, helping it to achieve the goals of production.

Reference

1. Forouzan 2010,The Data communication and networking

2. Network Security , viewed on 24^th april 2102, < www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13534858>

3. Network Security White paper, viewed on 25^th april 2012,< www.windowsecurity.com/whitepaper/>

4. Scheduling Algorithms , viewed on 25^th april 2012,

<       www.ctl.ua.edu/math103/scheduling/scheduling_algorithms.htm>

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