Professional Secure Networks

You have applied for a job as a cloud security engineer. You have just passed the first stage of the interview. The second stage will test your research skills within the field of cloud / network security. Your employer is offering could services to Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs). There are a lot of reasons why customers are benefiting from migrating to the cloud. Your task is to investigate the current security issues related to moving SMEs to the cloud.

It is not expected that your paper will be at the same level of depth as the papers published in research journals. However, your investigation should not be a general overview. Your written discussion should include critical evaluation and recommendations or conclusions from your findings.

As a professional researcher your report should include some or all of the following:
• the latest technologies, techniques or tools;
• relevant statistical data or trends;
• justification in terms of selecting network equipment or technologies;
• installation or configuration issues;
• testing or implementation procedures;
• social or ethical issues;
• standards or legal issues.

Your potential employer is also expecting from candidates the ability to publish research papers and therefore would like you to follow a specific format. You are required to follow the IEEE formatting style for conference proceedings:

A typical structure of a paper will include:

1. Abstract - this should be a briefly representation of your paper, you should also summarise the findings.

2. Introduction - where you introduce the reader to the selected topic, provide brief details of the importance of your research, present the aim/objectives of your paper and describe profiles of forthcoming sections.

3. Main Body - where you develop your arguments, examine and discuss related works, standards and best industry practices. This could be divided into a number of sub- sections.

4. Conclusions - where you will critically discuss your findings.

5. References - you should aim for approx. 15 references. All references should meet IEEE style.
There is neither a minimum nor maximum word limit. You are limited to a maximum of 6 sides of A4 paper (three double-sided pages). The word count will vary depending on how many illustrations you use.