The COVID-19 pandemic is an example of a temporary situation when critical infrastructure (CI) operators had to operate with continuously changing conditions. The role of cyber infrastructure during pandemics, for example for the remote work or access to critical systems, has also changed.

The fact than more and more Cyber-Physical or IoT systems are integrated in vehicle fleets, coupled with the growing connectivity of these devices, poses a higher risk of cyber attacks, due to the increased attack surface.

With the increased digitalization and adoption of cost-effective off-the-shelf components and cyber connectivity, Critical Infrastructures (CI) operators have benefited in many ways, but the attack surface has also become larger.

Comparison of Edge and Swarm Computing

Industry and academia shift from the single cloud provider paradigm to cloud federations and alternative models, which orchestrate heterogeneous resources, such as Mobile Edge Computing and Fog Computing.

With the development of new system solutions that integrate traditional cloud computing with the edge/fog computing paradigm, dynamic optimization of service execution has become a challenge due to the edge computing resources being more distributed and dynamic.

Coordinated fog (edge) and cloud computing systems are expected to expedite the evolution of smart farming toward openness and data sharing while making agriculture economically sustainable for smaller farms.

This whitepaper provides an overview of edge computing technology, use cases and existing market developments.

Edge computing locates computing and storage resources at the edge of the network, with the intention of getting data and analytics to the right place, at the right time. It decentralises data processing and avoids non-essential data transmission.