A virtualization approach for distributed resources security in network manufacturing

Network manufacturing technology has proven an effective approach to achieving integration of the distributed manufacturing resources over Internet. The nature of high interoperability of network manufacturing results in a variety of security threats due to the ultimate dependence upon operating system. Virtualization technology, allowing a monitor and control layer running between operating system and underlying infrastructure, could provide a promising approach to the security issues. This paper presents a secure VM-based architecture designed to enhance distributed resources security in network manufacturing. The paper also gives an application example with Xen. The application example shows that the virtualization approach can provide an effective support for intrusion detection, malicious software defending, user identification and data protection by the way of reliable separation of operating system from physical resources through VMM hypervisors, and thus achieve efficient access control of distributed resources in network manufacturing.