GreenShield-E2C: A sustainable energy-aware firewall configuration mechanism for edge-to-cloud continuum

The advent of the edge-to-cloud continuum paradigm has enabled a seamless integration of resources across different architectural layers, offering significant benefits in terms of scalability and flexibility. Due to the complexity of this environment, a key operation is to enforce adequate network security mechanisms to protect the continuum in an effective, efficient, and correct way. In this regard, a critical task is the configuration of distributed packet-filtering firewalls, because they are essential to protect the boundaries between the different layers. Unfortunately, their configuration is commonly performed manually and in an unoptimized way, raising pressing challenges from a sustainability perspective, due to the increasing power consumption related to the activation and operation of each firewall instance in the continuum. In order to address this problem, this paper proposes an approach, named GreenShield-E2C, which integrates automation, formal verification, and sustainability optimization for distributed firewall configuration into a unified methodology tailored explicitly for the continuum’s heterogeneous and multi-layer nature. These achievements were reached by formulating the configuration problem as a Maximum Satisfiability Modulo Theories problem, ensuring security policy compliance while minimizing the firewall power consumption. The implementation of the proposed approach has been experimentally evaluated on scenarios derived from a realistic smart city use case, so as to showcase its energy efficiency effectiveness and performance.