Cloud Attestation Component For Project Plan Integrity
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Solution Overview
Problem
Cloud-based project planning systems face security vulnerabilities where customers' project planning software and data are not adequately isolated, leading to potential data integrity violations and loss of know-how, especially in multi-tenant architectures, which can result in automation system failures and significant damage.
Innovation Solution
An attestation component is introduced to determine trustworthiness information about the cloud-based execution environment and application instances, linking this information with project plans, ensuring integrity and confidentiality through cryptographic hashes and signatures, and providing this information to project planning systems for verification before execution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of energy
If multiple customers share the same cloud infrastructure server hardware and runtime environment to reduce costs, then infrastructure costs are reduced and scalability is improved, but security isolation between customers is weakened and data integrity is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the cloud infrastructure into isolated execution environments for each customer. Each customer's project planning software runs in a separate virtualized container on the shared server hardware, creating logical separation that maintains security isolation while allowing physical resource sharing. This segmentation prevents one customer from accessing another's data while still utilizing the same underlying infrastructure.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a security module as an intermediary between the shared infrastructure and customer applications. This module acts as a mediator that verifies the integrity of execution environments, manages security policies, and ensures that customers can only access their own designated resources. The intermediary layer maintains trust in the multi-tenant architecture by enforcing isolation rules and detecting potential security violations.
2Reliability
If customer-specific execution instances or servers are provided to enhance security and trustworthiness, then data integrity and security isolation are improved, but hardware provision costs and operational costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple customer execution environments onto a single shared server infrastructure while maintaining logical separation through virtualization. Instead of provisioning separate physical servers for each customer, the system combines multiple virtualized instances on shared hardware, reducing overall infrastructure costs while preserving security boundaries through software-based isolation mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal cloud infrastructure platform that serves multiple customers simultaneously. The shared server hardware and runtime environment are designed to handle multiple tenants with different security requirements, making the infrastructure multi-functional. A single infrastructure setup can serve numerous customers with varying workloads, eliminating the need for dedicated hardware per customer while maintaining appropriate security levels.
3Device complexity
If operating system means are used to protect and isolate customer project planning software and data on the same system, then implementation simplicity is maintained, but protection strength is insufficient against determined attackers
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs a composite security architecture that combines multiple layers of protection: virtualization technology for basic isolation, security modules for integrity verification, and cryptographic mechanisms for data protection. This composite approach layers different security techniques together, creating a defense-in-depth strategy that is more resilient to attacks than any single mechanism alone, while maintaining manageable complexity through automated enforcement.
Data Source
AI summary
Various embodiments of the teachings herein include an attestation component configured to attest a cloud-based execution environment. The cloud-based execution environment comprises at least one application instance and a project plan assigned to the at least one application instance. The attestation component may include: a determination component configured to determine at least one piece of trustworthiness information indicating a trustworthiness of the cloud-based execution environment and of the at least one application instance; and a linking component configured to establish a link between the trustworthiness information and the project plan.