Security in Ultra Large Software Systems

Ultra large software systems play an increasing important role in our lives. They are systems such as the world wide banking system, mobile communications systems, social networks, online retailers and online gaming systems. Ultra large software systems are critical and failures in the systems can critically impact the economic health of companies, markets and even countries. Recent data breaches by several retailers have resulted in the disclosure of millions of customer credit cards imposing significant costs on financial institutions to replace the cards and audit the accounts for fraudulent activity. The incredible increase in the power and performance of client systems such as laptops, tablets and mobile phones offer significant advantages in the performance of these large applications, reducing the load on the central servers and increasing the overall performance, availability and reliability of the systems. However, the dependence on client side computation raises issues of fidelity, privacy and security. The research in this project explores issues of security in ultra large software systems, in particular the security issues that arise when significant computation is located on the client systems in the users hands.

Faculty Supervisor:

Drs. Thomas Dean & Mohammad Zulkernine

Student:

Fahim Imam, Andrew Hoyt, Tianbin Jiang, Eslam Abd Allah & TBD

Partner:

Irdeto Canada

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

Queen's University