A Stochastic Programming Approach for Risk Management in Mobile Cloud Computing

TL;DR

This paper presents a stochastic programming framework for risk management in mobile cloud computing, enabling providers to select optimal security strategies to minimize expected losses from cyberattacks under uncertainty.

Contribution

It introduces a dynamic risk management framework combined with stochastic programming to optimize security investments against cyber threats in mobile cloud computing.

Findings

Effective in minimizing expected total loss under budget constraints

Handles uncertainty in attack types and losses

Supports selection of security solutions and insurance policies

Abstract

The development of mobile cloud computing has brought many benefits to mobile users as well as cloud service providers. However, mobile cloud computing is facing some challenges, especially security-related problems due to the growing number of cyberattacks which can cause serious losses. In this paper, we propose a dynamic framework together with advanced risk management strategies to minimize losses caused by cyberattacks to a cloud service provider. In particular, this framework allows the cloud service provider to select appropriate security solutions, e.g., security software/hardware implementation and insurance policies, to deal with different types of attacks. Furthermore, the stochastic programming approach is adopted to minimize the expected total loss for the cloud service provider under its financial capability and uncertainty of attacks and their potential losses. Through numerical evaluation, we show that our approach is an effective tool in not only dealing with cyberattacks under uncertainty, but also minimizing the total loss for the cloud service provider given its available budget.