An Approach for Managing Access to Personal Information Using Ontology-Based Chains

The importance of electronic healthcare has caused numerous changes in both substantive and procedural aspects of healthcare processes. These changes have produced new challenges to patient privacy and information secrecy. Traditional privacy policies cannot respond to rapidly increased privacy needs of patients in electronic healthcare. Technically enforceable privacy policies are needed in order to protect patient privacy in modern healthcare with its cross organisational information sharing and decision making. This thesis proposes a personal information flow model that specifies a limited number of acts on this type of information. Ontology classified Chains of these acts can be used instead of the "intended/business purposes" used in privacy access control to seamlessly imbuing current healthcare applications and their supporting infrastructure with security and privacy functionality. In this thesis, we first introduce an integrated basic architecture, design principles, and implementation techniques for privacy-preserving data mining systems. We then discuss the key methods of privacypreserving data mining systems which include four main methods: Role based access control (RBAC), Hippocratic database, Chain method and eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML). We found out that the traditional methods suffer from two main problems: complexity of privacy policy design and the lack of context flexibility that is needed while working in critical situations such as the one we find in hospitals. We present and compare strategies for realising these methods. Theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation show that our new method can generate accurate data mining models and safe data access management while protecting the privacy of the data being mined. The experiments followed comparative kind of experiments, to show the ease of the design first and then follow real scenarios to show the context flexibility in saving personal information privacy of our investigated method

Medical Cyber-Physical Systems Development: A Forensics-Driven Approach

The synthesis of technology and the medical industry has partly contributed to the increasing interest in Medical Cyber-Physical Systems (MCPS). While these systems provide benefits to patients and professionals, they also introduce new attack vectors for malicious actors (e.g. financially-and/or criminally-motivated actors). A successful breach involving a MCPS can impact patient data and system availability. The complexity and operating requirements of a MCPS complicates digital investigations. Coupling this information with the potentially vast amounts of information that a MCPS produces and/or has access to is generating discussions on, not only, how to compromise these systems but, more importantly, how to investigate these systems. The paper proposes the integration of forensics principles and concepts into the design and development of a MCPS to strengthen an organization's investigative posture. The framework sets the foundation for future research in the refinement of specific solutions for MCPS investigations.Comment: This is the pre-print version of a paper presented at the 2nd International Workshop on Security, Privacy, and Trustworthiness in Medical Cyber-Physical Systems (MedSPT 2017

A Human-centric Perspective on Digital Consenting: The Case of GAFAM

According to different legal frameworks such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an end-user's consent constitutes one of the well-known legal bases for personal data processing. However, research has indicated that the majority of end-users have difficulty in understanding what they are consenting to in the digital world. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that marginalized people are confronted with even more difficulties when dealing with their own digital privacy. In this research, we use an enactivist perspective from cognitive science to develop a basic human-centric framework for digital consenting. We argue that the action of consenting is a sociocognitive action and includes cognitive, collective, and contextual aspects. Based on the developed theoretical framework, we present our qualitative evaluation of the consent-obtaining mechanisms implemented and used by the five big tech companies, i.e. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft (GAFAM). The evaluation shows that these companies have failed in their efforts to empower end-users by considering the human-centric aspects of the action of consenting. We use this approach to argue that their consent-obtaining mechanisms violate principles of fairness, accountability and transparency. We then suggest that our approach may raise doubts about the lawfulness of the obtained consent—particularly considering the basic requirements of lawful consent within the legal framework of the GDPR

How authentic should a learning context be? Using real and simulated profiles in a classroom intervention to improve safety on social network sites

With the rise of social network sites (SNSs), there is an increasing need for safety education within the current cyber society. To this end, a variety of educational materials have been developed to prepare children to be vigilant when interacting on such sites. However, little is known about the critical design aspects necessary to make these materials effective. In this study, we build on the results of two previous studies, in which we found that general instructional principles drawn from constructivism, such as collaborative learning, are not always appropriate to teach children how to behave safely online. This study therefore focuses on the importance of authentic learning and active learning as critical design features. A quasi-experimental study was conducted in secondary schools in order to compare the impact of two classroom interventions about the risks on SNSs. As part of the intervention, students were presented scaffolds towards different risks related to an SNS-profile through a series of questions. In the control condition, these questions concerned a simulated SNS-profile on paper containing signs of many risks. In the experimental condition, students had to answer the same questions about their own SNS-profile on a computer. It was hypothesized that the simulated profile would not be experienced as realistic, and that students would have difficulties identifying with it. On the other hand, teenagers were expected to be able to recognize more risks on the simulated ‘worst-case scenario’ profile than on their own profile, which would facilitate the scaffolding process in the control condition. The results of the study mostly confirmed these hypotheses. Furthermore, the question arose as to whether the intervention based on the student’s own rea listic profile was educationally more valuable than the intervention based on the simulated profile, but no such added value was found. On the contrary, the scaffolding questions about the simulated profile were found to be more effective in teaching the teenagers about the different categories of risks that were tackled. Based on these findings, the importance of an authentic setting was put into perspective. Within the context of a classroom intervention to promote safety on SNSs, the exercise based on the simulated SNS-profile is put forward as the more effective teaching strategy

Understanding Shoulder Surfing in the Wild: Stories from Users and Observers

Research has brought forth a variety of authentication systems to mitigate observation attacks. However, there is little work about shoulder surfing situations in the real world. We present the results of a user survey (N=174) in which we investigate actual stories about shoulder surfing on mobile devices from both users and observers. Our analysis indicates that shoulder surfing mainly occurs in an opportunistic, non-malicious way. It usually does not have serious consequences, but evokes negative feelings for both parties, resulting in a variety of coping strategies. Observed data was personal in most cases and ranged from information about interests and hobbies to login data and intimate details about third persons and relationships. Thus, our work contributes evidence for shoulder surfing in the real world and informs implications for the design of privacy protection mechanisms

Governing autonomous vehicles: emerging responses for safety, liability, privacy, cybersecurity, and industry risks

The benefits of autonomous vehicles (AVs) are widely acknowledged, but there are concerns about the extent of these benefits and AV risks and unintended consequences. In this article, we first examine AVs and different categories of the technological risks associated with them. We then explore strategies that can be adopted to address these risks, and explore emerging responses by governments for addressing AV risks. Our analyses reveal that, thus far, governments have in most instances avoided stringent measures in order to promote AV developments and the majority of responses are non-binding and focus on creating councils or working groups to better explore AV implications. The US has been active in introducing legislations to address issues related to privacy and cybersecurity. The UK and Germany, in particular, have enacted laws to address liability issues, other countries mostly acknowledge these issues, but have yet to implement specific strategies. To address privacy and cybersecurity risks strategies ranging from introduction or amendment of non-AV specific legislation to creating working groups have been adopted. Much less attention has been paid to issues such as environmental and employment risks, although a few governments have begun programmes to retrain workers who might be negatively affected.Comment: Transport Reviews, 201