Abstract
As IoT technologies mature, they are increasingly finding their way into more sensitive domains, such as Medical and Industrial IoT, in which safety and cyber-security are paramount. While the number of deployed IoT devices continues to increase annually, they still present severe cyber-security vulnerabilities, turning them into potential targets and entry points to support further attacks. Naturally, as these nodes are compromised, attackers aim at setting up stealthy communication behaviours, to exfiltrate data or to orchestrate nodes of a botnet in a cloaked fashion. Network covert channels are increasingly being used with such malicious intents. The IEEE 802.15.4 is one of the most pervasive protocols in IoT, and a fundamental part of many communication infrastructures. Despite this fact, the possibility of setting up such covert communication techniques on this medium has received very little attention. We aim at analysing the performance and feasibility of such covert-channel implementations upon the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. This will enable a better understanding of the involved risk and help supporting the development of further cyber-security mechanisms to mitigate this threat.

Abstract
In this paper we analyze some of the existing solutions for Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM), which can be used on industrial environments, and that are, at the same time, capable of handling large quantities of data and of providing adequate Quality-of-Service (QoS) levels for its supported applications. We also make a proposal for the generic structure of a middleware layer supported on a MOM. © 2013 IEEE.

Abstract
The Arrowhead project aims to address the technical and applicative issues associated with cooperative automation based on Service Oriented Architectures. The problems of developing such kind of systems are mainly due to the lack of adequate development and service documentation methodologies, which would ease the burden of reusing services on different applications. The Arrowhead project proposes a technical framework to efficiently support the development of such systems, which includes several tools for documentation of services and to support the development of SOA-based installations. The work presented in this paper describes the approach which has been developed for the first generation pilots to support the documentation of their structural services. Each service, system and system-of-systems within the Arrowhead Framework must be documented and described in such way that it can be implemented, tested and deployed in an interoperable way. This paper presents the first steps of realizing the Arrowhead vision for interoperable services, systems and systems-of-systems.

Abstract
Industrial processes use energy to transform raw materials and intermediate goods into final products. Many efforts have been done on the minimization of energy costs in industrial plants. Apart from working on "how" an industrial process is implemented, it is possible to reduce the energy costs by focusing on "when" it is performed. Although, some manufacturing plants (e.g. refining or petrochemical plants) can be inflexible with respect to time due to interdependencies in processes that must be respected for performance and safety reasons, there are other industrial segments, such as alumina plants or discrete manufacturing, with more degrees of flexibility. These manufacturing plants can consider a more flexible scheduling of the most energy-intensive processes in response to dynamic prices and overall condition of the electricity market. In this scenario, requests for energy can be encoded by means of a formal structure called flex-offers, then aggregated (joining several flex-offers into a bigger one) and sent to the market, scheduled, disaggregated and transformed into consumption plans, and eventually, into production schedules for given industrial plant. In this paper, we describe the flex-offer concept and how it can be applied to industrial and home automation scenarios. The architecture proposed in this paper aims to be adaptable to multiples scenarios (industrial, home and building automation, etc.), thus providing the foundations for different concept implementations using multiple technologies or supporting various kinds of devices.

Abstract
The Arrowhead project aims to address the technical and applicative issues associated with cooperative automation based on Service Oriented Architectures. The problems of developing such kind of systems are mainly due to the lack of adequate development and service documentation methodologies, which would ease the burden of reusing services on different applications. The Arrowhead project proposes a technical framework to efficiently support the development of such systems, which includes several tools for documentation of services and to support the development of SOA-based installations. The work presented in this paper describes the approach which has been developed for the first generation pilots to support the documentation of their structural services. Each service, system and system-of-systems within the Arrowhead Framework must be documented and described in such way that it can be implemented, tested and deployed in an interoperable way. This paper presents the first steps of realizing the Arrowhead vision for interoperable services, systems and systems-of-systems. © 2014 IEEE.

Abstract
The Arrowhead project aims to address the technical and applicative issues associated with cooperative automation based on Service Oriented Architectures. The problems of developing such kind of systems are mainly due to the lack of adequate development and service documentation methodologies, which would ease the burden of reusing services on different applications. The Arrowhead project proposes a technical framework to efficiently support the development of such systems, which includes several tools for documentation of services and to support the development of SOA-based installations. The work presented in this paper describes the approach which has been developed for the first generation pilots to support the documentation of their structural services. Each service, system and system-of-systems within the Arrowhead Framework must be documented and described in such way that it can be implemented, tested and deployed in an interoperable way. This paper presents the first steps of realizing the Arrowhead vision for interoperable services, systems and systems-of-systems. © 2014 IEEE.