Complex event processing for physical and cyber security in datacentres - recent progress, challenges and recommendations

Abstract

Abstract A datacentre stores information and manages data access in fast and reliable manner. Failure of datacentre operation is not an option and can be catastrophic. Internet of things (IoT) devices in datacentre can automate management tasks and reduce human intervention and error. IoT devices can be used to manage many datacentre routine tasks such as monitoring physical infrastructure, updating software and configuration, monitoring network traffic, and automating alerting reports to respective authorities. The physical and cyber security of the datacentre can be handled by IoT technology by intrusion detection methods. By 2025, more than 25 billion things will be connected to the internet network, therefore massive data will be generated by different heterogeneous sources, and powerful processing engines such as complex event processing (CEP) are needed to handle such a fast and continuous stream of big data. The integration of machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) can enhance CEP by introducing new features such as automated rule extraction and self-healing mechanism. This study aims to provide an overview of CEP, as well as its features and potential for integration with IoT applications and ML/DL techniques. We provide a review of recent research works to highlight the capability and applicability of CEP technology to monitor physical facilities and cyber security in detail. This review also highlights several issues and challenges, and provides suggestions for future research. The highlighted insights and recommendations in this paper could raise efforts toward the development of future datacentres based on CEP technology.

Keywords

• Datacentre
• Physical security
• Cyber security
• IoT
• CEP
• Machine learning