With the emergence of IoT and expanding the coverage of distributed networks such as cloud and fog, security attacks and breaches are becoming distributed and expanded too. Cybersecurity attacks can disrupt business continuity or expose critical data, leading to significant failures. The Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) as a remedy in such networks play a critical role in this ecosystem to find an attack at the earliest time and the countermeasure is performed if necessary. Artificial intelligence techniques such as machine learning-based and meta-heuristic-based approaches are being pervasively applied to prepare smarter IDS components from logged network traffic. The network traffic is recorded in the form of data sets for further analysis to detect traffic behavior from past treatments. Feature selection is a prominent approach in creating the prediction model to recognize feature network connection is normal or not. Since the feature selection problem in large datasets is NP-Hard and utilizing only heuristic-based approaches is not as efficient as desired, meta-heuristic-based approaches attract research attention to prepare highly accurate prediction models. To address the issue, this paper presents a subjective classification of published literature. Then, this presents a survey study on meta-heuristic-based feature selection approaches in preparing efficient IDSs. It investigates several kinds of literature from different angles and compares them in terms of used metrics in the literature to give broad insights into readers for advantages, challenges, and limitations. It can pave the way by highlighting research gaps for further processing and improvement in the future by interested researchers in the field.

Edge-cloud computing has emerged as a key enabling paradigm for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) systems because of the stringent computational and ultra-low-latency requirements of AR/VR workloads. Designing efficient edge-cloud systems for such workloads involves multiple technical aspects, including communication technologies, service placement, task offloading and caching, service migration, and security and privacy. This paper provides a structured and technical analysis of these aspects from an AR/VR perspective. We adopt a two-stage literature analysis, in which Google Scholar is used to identify fundamental technical aspects and solution approaches, followed by a focused analysis of recent research trends and future directions using academic databases (e.g., IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, and ScienceDirect). We present an organized classification of the core technical aspects and investigate existing solution approaches, including heuristic, metaheuristic, learning-based, and hybrid strategies. Rather than introducing application-specific designs, the analysis focuses on workload-driven challenges and trade-offs that arise in AR/VR systems. Based on this classification, we analyze recent research trends, identify underexplored technical areas, and highlight key research gaps that hinder the efficient deployment of AR/VR services over edge-cloud infrastructures. The findings of this study provide practical insights for researchers and system designers and help guide future research toward more responsive, scalable, and reliable edge-cloud AR/VR systems.

The integration of edge and cloud computing is critical for resource-intensive applications which require low-latency communication, high reliability, and efficient resource utilisation. The service placement problem in these environments poses significant challenges owing to dynamic network conditions, heterogeneous resource availability, and the necessity for real-time decision-making. Because determining an optimal service placement in such networks is an NP-complete problem, the existing solutions rely on fast but suboptimal heuristics or computationally intensive metaheuristics. Neither approach meets the real-time demands of online scenarios, owing to its inefficiency or high computational overhead. In this study, we propose a lightweight learning-based approach for the online placement of services with multi-version components in edge-to-cloud computing. The proposed approach utilises a Shallow Neural Network (SNN) with both weight and power coefficients optimised using a Genetic Algorithm (GA). The use of an SNN ensures low computational overhead during the training phase and almost instant inference when deployed, making it well suited for real-time and online service placement in edge-to-cloud environments where rapid decision-making is crucial. The proposed method (SNN-GA) is specifically evaluated in AR/VR-based remote repair and maintenance scenarios, developed in collaboration with our industrial partner, and demonstrated robust performance and scalability across a wide range of problem sizes. The experimental results show that SNN-GA reduces the service response time by up to 27% compared to metaheuristics and 55% compared to heuristics at larger scales. It also achieves over 95% platform reliability, outperforming heuristics (which remain below 85%) and metaheuristics (which decrease to 90% at larger scales).

Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (AVX-512), a modern SIMD instruction set for x86 architectures, enables data-level parallelism through 512-bit wide ZMM registers capable of processing multiple data elements concurrently within a single instruction cycle. In this study, we present a high-throughput, lock-free, in-memory architecture for key-value data-stores that exploits AVX-512 vector operations to accelerate fundamental operations such as insertion and lookup. Our design introduces an optimized memory layout that partitions the key space into two disjoint regions (primary and secondary) and employs three independent hash functions to identify candidate slots. This asymmetric layout improves key distribution, reduces collision probability, and enhances overall lookup efficiency. Experimental evaluation shows that this strategy yields the lowest insertion failure rate among tested memory partitioning schemes. By leveraging AVX-512 instructions in combination with most optimized memory layout, our implementation achieves insertion throughput within 6% of Intel TBB’s highly optimized multithreaded hash map, despite avoiding explicit synchronization or thread-level parallelism. Under workloads with 550 million entries and a 90% miss rate, our approach delivers 4.0-5.1x speedup over standard STL, Boost, Robin-Hood, and Abseil hash maps, and up to 2.5 x improvement relative to TBB and Abseil. These gains are consistently observed for both 32-bit and 64-bit floating-point key types. The results confirm the viability of AVX-512-centric designs as a cost-effective alternative to thread-level parallelism, particularly in environments where minimizing synchronization overhead and ensuring deterministic execution are critical. Our findings suggest for a paradigm shift in CPU and system architecture, emphasizing wider vector units and improved memory bandwidth utilization as primary levers for scalable high-performance computing. These findings suggest that future extensions of AVX-512 capabilities, such as non-blocking memory loads, expanded vector registers, and asynchronous prefetching, could enhance the efficiency of data-intensive workloads. 

The evolution of edge-to-cloud networks has significantly increased the complexity of determining optimal service placement across these infrastructures, a challenge identified as an NP-complete problem. To address such problems, exact algorithms are impractical at larger scales owing to their computational demands. Heuristics exhibit faster runtimes but lower solution quality, whereas metaheuristics provide high-quality solutions at the cost of increased runtime. In this study, service placement in edge-to-cloud systems is investigated and formulated as an optimisation problem, where each service component is provided by different vendors and is available in multiple versions. The inclusion of multi-version components adds an additional layer of complexity, making the placement problem even more challenging. Specifically, this study addresses the service placement problem in Augmented Reality (AR)- and Virtual Reality (VR)-based remote repair and maintenance use cases, where service response time and system reliability are critical performance metrics. To optimise both metrics, we propose a novel hybrid metaheuristic algorithm (E-PSOGA) which combines the fast convergence of Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) with the global search capabilities of Genetic Algorithms (GA). A custom healing operator is also introduced to further enhance the solution quality and reduce the algorithm runtime. A comprehensive performance assessment shows that E-PSOGA reduces the response time by 37% compared with the other implemented baseline algorithms. E-PSOGA achieved 98% platform and 97% service reliability while maintaining a reasonable algorithm runtime. These results indicate that the proposed approach is well-suited for large-scale and time-sensitive scenarios requiring both computational efficiency and high solution quality. 

Edge computing brings computation closer to Internet-of-Things (IoT) data sources, reducing latency but increasing energy consumption and susceptibility to node failures. The cloud platform provides extensive computational capabilities, but comes with significant costs and communication delays due to network congestion. The edge-cloud continuum strategically combines these approaches to mitigate their individual drawbacks. However, effectively scheduling IoT workflows to minimize costs while adhering to strict requirements for latency, energy efficiency, and reliability remains a major challenge in real-time IoT applications. To address these challenges, we propose the Reliable Energy-constrained Cost-aware Real-time (RECR) algorithm for optimizing IoT workflow scheduling across the edge-cloud continuum. RECR minimizes monetary costs and enhances reliability while adhering to strict energy and deadline constraints. We also introduce RECR-D, a fault-tolerant extension that employs adaptive task duplication to manage transient and permanent failures, with reliability rigorously modeled using Continuous-Time Markov Chains (CTMCs) to integrate dynamic failure behavior. Extensive simulations demonstrate that RECR reduces workflow monetary costs by approximately 21% and improves deadline adherence by 37% compared to state-of-the-art algorithms. Furthermore, RECR-D improves compliance with reliability and energy constraints by 27% and by up to 208%, respectively, highlighting its robust performance in dynamic, failure-prone environments. These contributions significantly advance workflow management for IoT applications, proving crucial for real-time traffic control and video analytics in smart cities, ensuring timely processing and lower costs. They are also vital for remote patient monitoring and medical imaging analysis in healthcare, improving reliability and meeting deadlines for patient safety.

Edge computing is a key technology that provides computational resources close to IoT devices. One of the primary challenges in edge computing is determining whether to execute computation-intensive and time-sensitive tasks locally, or to offload them to edge and cloud computing resources, as well as to order them for execution according to their deadlines. Various offloading algorithms have been proposed for these systems, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Several studies did not exploit all the IoT, edge, and cloud layers, whereas others only considered a few criteria for decision making on task offloading. Other approaches used greedy methods that could not provide high-quality solutions or employed standard optimization algorithms, which took a long time to converge. In this study, we propose an improved genetic algorithm for joint task offloading and ordering to distribute tasks across the IoT, edge, and cloud layers. It includes a novel population initialization scheme that uses various methods, including particle swarm optimization. To increase the convergence speed, the proposed algorithm (GPTOR) splits the solution space into several areas, which is called gridding. The simulation results illustrate that our algorithm outperforms previous schemes by 41.07%, 26.25%, and 28.33% in terms of average delay, monetary cost, and energy consumption, respectively. 

The resource constraints of Internet of Things (IoT) devices pose significant hurdles to delay-sensitive applications that operate in dynamic and wireless settings. Since offloading tasks to cloud servers can be hindered by security concerns and latency issues, edge and fog computing bring computation closer to data sources. Given their inherently distributed and resource-constrained nature, edge/fog-enabled platforms require more advanced resource-management solutions to address the numerous constraints encountered in dynamic and wireless environments. This study introduces an innovative resource management algorithm designed for dynamic edge/fog computing environments, tailored to real-world applications, with the objective of enhancing delay performance through optimal container placement. The resource management problem incorporates mobility patterns in wireless settings to reduce migration delay and the processing history of edge/fog nodes to provide a novel method for computing processing delay, resulting in a combined optimization problem expressed in an integer linear programming (ILP) format. To address the formulated NP-Hard problem, we developed a low-complexity Metaheuristic Resource Management algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization (MRM-PSO) with effective particle modelling. Our experimental findings demonstrate that greedy heuristics and genetic algorithm (GA) are inadequate for efficiently resolving a given problem, whereas our proposed MRM-PSO algorithm efficiently locates near-optimal solutions within reasonable execution times when compared to exact solvers. MRM-PSO reduces execution time by up to 663.82 % in the worst case and 2307.5 % in the best case. Furthermore, it attains a delay that is just 0.98 % higher in the best case and 5.54 % higher in the worst case compared to the optimal solution.

In the last years, we have seen an increase in the number of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered applications for information retrieval and data science. This fact led to an increasing reliance on distributed computing infrastructures, including Cloud, Edge, and IoT environments. These architectures enable powerful and scalable solutions but also introduce new security and privacy risks that must be addressed at both the system and data levels. Even a single breach on any of the links of the data-service-infrastructure chain may seriously compromise the security of the end-user application. With such a wide attack surface, security must definitely be approached in a holistic way and addressed in any layer where concerns may potentially arise. SIoTEC solicits novel and innovative ideas, proposals, positions and best practices that address the modelling, design, implementation, and enforcement of security in Cloud/Edge/IoT environments. Workshop website: https://siotec.netsons.org/ 

The increasing complexity of Distributed Computing (DC) systems requires advanced failure-prediction models to enhance reliability and efficiency. This study proposes a comprehensive methodology for developing generic machine learning (ML) models capable of cross-layer and cross-platform failure-prediction without requiring platform-specific retraining. Using the Grid5000 failure dataset from the Failure Trace Archive (FTA), we explored Linear and Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and XGBoost to predict three critical metrics: Time Between Failures (TBF), Time to Return/Repair (TTR), and Failing Node Identification (FNI). Our approach involved extensive exploratory data analysis (EDA), statistical examination of failure patterns, and model evaluation across the cluster, site, and system levels. The results demonstrate that XGBoost consistently outperforms the other models, achieving near-perfect 100% accuracy for TBF and FNI, with robust generalisability across diverse DC environments. In addition, we introduce a hierarchical DC architecture that integrates these failure-prediction models. In the form of a use case, we also demonstrate how service providers can use these prediction models to balance service reliability and cost.