Edge Computing Perspectives: Architectures, Technologies, and Open Security Issues

Edge and Fog Computing will be increasingly pervasive in the years to come due to the benefits they bring in many specific use-case scenarios over traditional Cloud Computing. Nevertheless, the security concerns Fog and Edge Computing bring in have not been fully considered and addressed so far, especially when considering the underlying technologies (e.g. virtualization) instrumental to reap the benefits of the adoption of the Edge paradigm. In particular, these virtualization technologies (i.e. Containers, Real Time Operating Systems, and Unikernels), are far from being adequately resilient and secure. Aiming at shedding some light on current technology limitations, and providing hints on future research security issues and technology development, in this paper we introduce the main technologies supporting the Edge paradigm, survey existing issues, introduce relevant scenarios, and discusses benefits and caveats of the different existing solutions in the above introduced scenarios. Finally, we provide a discussion on the current security issues in the introduced context, and strive to outline future research directions in both security and technology development in a number of Edge/Fog scenarios.