Reasoning about uncertain contexts in pervasive computing environments

Context-aware systems can't always identify the current context precisely, so they need support for handling uncertainty. A prototype pervasive computing infrastructure, Gaia, allows applications and services to reason about uncertainty using mechanisms such as probabilistic logic, fuzzy logic, and Bayesian networks.     

Design and deployment challenges in immersive and wearable technologies

The current century has brought an unimaginable growth in information and communications technology (ICT) and needs of enormous computing. The advancements in computer hardware and software particularly helped fuel the requirements of human beings, and revolutionized the smart products as an outcome. The advent of wearable devices from their development till successful materialisation has only taken less than a quarter of a century. The huge benefits of these smart wearable technologies cannot be fully enjoyed until and unless the reliability of a complete system is ensured. The reliability can be increased by the consistent advancements in hardware and software in parallel. User expectations actually are the challenges that keep the advancements alive while improving at an unmatchable pace. The future of wearable and other smart devices depends on whether they can provide a timely solution that is reliable, richer in resources, smaller in size, and cheaper in price. This paper addresses the threats and opportunities in the development and the acceptance of immersive and wearable technologies. The hardware and software challenges for the purpose of development are discussed to demonstrate the bottlenecks of the current technologies and the limitations that impose those bottlenecks. For the purpose of adoption, social and commercial challenges related to innovation and acceptability are discussed. The paper proposes guidelines that are expected to be applicable in several considerable applications of wearable technologies, for example, social networks, healthcare, and banking.     

Secure sensors data acquisition and communication protection in eHealthcare: Review on the state of the art

Recent advances in hardware technology have led to the development of low cost, power efficient and more feature rich devices that are amongst the most critical parts of communication networks. These devices or sensors can now sense data with more accuracy, process it by themselves and send it to the neighboring node or the sink node. However, robust and reliable security mechanisms are not yet properly implemented on these sensors due to their limited energy and computation power. Sensors also play a very important role in eHealthcare systems where ubiquitous patient monitoring is performed. As data is generated from the sensor nodes, reliable, secure and attack-resistant data acquisition and transmission is important for an efficient eHealthcare systems. This survey focuses on security issues of sensors data acquisition and transmission protocols, describing their main security features and comparing them in the context of a secure eHealthcare system. A taxonomy of open issues and future challenges is also discussed with respect to specific security metrics described in the paper.     

A Middleware Architecture for Securing Ubiquitous Computing Cyber Infrastructures

Ubiquitous computing is revolutionizing the way applications, users, resources, and physical spaces interact. Securing cyber infrastructures for ubiquitous computing environments, such as smart buildings and campuses, can be challenging. A critical cyber infrastructure is necessary that can combine networks, processors, and devices with mechanisms, protocols, and services to offer reliable, fault-tolerant, available, and secure operations. Existing CCI implementations create statically configured, confined networked subsystems that are isolated from the public Internet and are context insensitive. This leads to multiple, incompatible subsystems incapable of interoperating, thus making operations, management, and trust difficult. The Heterogeneous Survivable Trusted Information-Assurance Architecture addresses the problem of securing critical information services in large-scale ubiquitous computing environments. Hestia is a programmable middleware solution implemented as a network of middleboxes. These middleboxes form protective layers that isolate CCI services and mediate authorized access to Hestia’s services. They also provide a programmable, distributed, object-oriented framework that enables the integration of security, privacy, and reliability mechanisms in service-access interfaces and implementations.     

A lightweight reconfigurable security mechanism for 3G/4G mobile devices

Wireless communications are advancing rapidly. We are currently on the verge of a new revolutionary advancement in wireless data communications: the third generation of mobile telecommunications. 3G promises to converge mobile technology with Internet connectivity. Wireless data, multimedia applications, and integrated services will be among the major driving forces behind 3G. While wireless communications provide great flexibility and mobility, they often come at the expense of security. This is because wireless communications rely on open and public transmission media that raise further security vulnerabilities in addition to the security threats found in regular wired networks. Existing security schemes in 2G and 3G systems are inadequate, since there is a greater demand to provide a more flexible, reconfigurable, and scalable security mechanism that can evolve as fast as mobile hosts are evolving into full-fledged IP-enabled devices. We propose a lightweight, component-based, reconfigurable security mechanism to enhance the security abilities of mobile devices.