Nick Savage

Matthew Swann, Joseph Rose, Gueltoum Bendiab et al.

Network traffic generators are invaluable tools that allow for applied experimentation to evaluate the performance of networks, infrastructure, and security controls, by modelling and simulating the communication packets and payloads that would be produced by machines and devices on the network. Specifically for security applications, these tools can be used to consistently simulate malicious activity on the network and test the components designed to detect and mitigate malicious activities, in a highly reliable and customisable way. However, despite the promising features, most of these tools have some problems that can undermine the correctness of experiments. The accuracy of the simulation results depends strongly on the performance and reliability of the used generator. Thus, in this paper, we investigate the performance and accuracy of three of the most reviewed network traffic generators in literature, namely Cisco TRex, Ostinato and Genesids. Mainly, the comparative experiments examine the strengths and limitations of these tools, which can help the research community to choose the most suitable one to assess the performance of their networks and security controls

David Buckley, Gueltoum Bendiab, Stavros Shiaeles et al.

The rise of the subscription-based business model has led to a corresponding increase in the number of subscriptions where a customer needs to manage their payments. This management of payments for multiple subscriptions has become a very complicated and insecure task for customers, especially when it comes to renewing payment details when the card is lost, stolen, or expires. In addition, this, mostly manual, process is vulnerable to human error, digital frauds, and data breaches, according to security reports. Thus, in this paper, we propose a novel approach to automate, manage and simplify the Financial Supply Chain involved in the process of updating and managing payments to user subscriptions. This is done by utilising the Hyperledger Sawtooth blockchain framework, that allows a consumer to enter their payment card details in a central digital wallet and link their subscriptions to their cards. The card being updated triggers an event on the blockchain, which allow for the payment details to be updated on subscription systems automatically. The verification tests performed on the prototype of the proposed system shows that its current implementation has been securely achieved.