A proposal to improve the authentication process in m-health environments

Special Section: Mission Critical Public-Safety Communications: Architectures, Enabling Technologies, and Future Applications One of the challenges of mobile health is to provide a way of maintaining privacy in the access to the data. Especially, when using ICT for providing access to health services and information. In these scenarios, it is essential to determine and verify the identity of users to ensure the security of the network. A way of authenticating the identity of each patient, doctor or any stakeholder involved in the process is to use a software application that analyzes the face of them through the cams integrated in their devices. The selection of an appropriate facial authentication software application requires a fair comparison between alternatives through a common database of face images. Users usually carry out authentication with variations in their aspects while accessing to health services. This paper presents both 1) a database of facial images that combines the most common variations that can happen in the participants and 2) an algorithm that establishes different levels of access to the data based on data sensitivity levels and the accuracy of the authentication

REISCH: incorporating lightweight and reliable algorithms into healthcare applications of WSNs

Healthcare institutions require advanced technology to collect patients' data accurately and continuously. The tradition technologies still suffer from two problems: performance and security efficiency. The existing research has serious drawbacks when using public-key mechanisms such as digital signature algorithms. In this paper, we propose Reliable and Efficient Integrity Scheme for Data Collection in HWSN (REISCH) to alleviate these problems by using secure and lightweight signature algorithms. The results of the performance analysis indicate that our scheme provides high efficiency in data integration between sensors and server (saves more than 24% of alive sensors compared to traditional algorithms). Additionally, we use Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) to validate the security procedures in our scheme. Security analysis results confirm that REISCH is safe against some well-known attacks

A Privacy Preserving Framework for RFID Based Healthcare Systems

RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) is anticipated to be a core technology that will be used in many practical applications of our life in near future. It has received considerable attention within the healthcare for almost a decade now. The technology’s promise to efficiently track hospital supplies, medical equipment, medications and patients is an attractive proposition to the healthcare industry. However, the prospect of wide spread use of RFID tags in the healthcare area has also triggered discussions regarding privacy, particularly because RFID data in transit may easily be intercepted and can be send to track its user (owner). In a nutshell, this technology has not really seen its true potential in healthcare industry since privacy concerns raised by the tag bearers are not properly addressed by existing identification techniques. There are two major types of privacy preservation techniques that are required in an RFID based healthcare system—(1) a privacy preserving authentication protocol is required while sensing RFID tags for different identification and monitoring purposes, and (2) a privacy preserving access control mechanism is required to restrict unauthorized access of private information while providing healthcare services using the tag ID. In this paper, we propose a framework (PriSens-HSAC) that makes an effort to address the above mentioned two privacy issues. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first framework to provide increased privacy in RFID based healthcare systems, using RFID authentication along with access control technique

Security Implications of Fog Computing on the Internet of Things

Recently, the use of IoT devices and sensors has been rapidly increased which also caused data generation (information and logs), bandwidth usage, and related phenomena to be increased. To our best knowledge, a standard definition for the integration of fog computing with IoT is emerging now. This integration will bring many opportunities for the researchers, especially while building cyber-security related solutions. In this study, we surveyed about the integration of fog computing with IoT and its implications. Our goal was to find out and emphasize problems, specifically security related problems that arise with the employment of fog computing by IoT. According to our findings, although this integration seems to be non-trivial and complicated, it has more benefits than the implications.Comment: 5 pages, conference paper, to appear in Proceedings of the ICCE 2019, IEEE 37th International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE), Jan 11- 13, 2019, Las Vegas, NV, US

Security, user experience, acceptability attributes for the integration of physical and virtual identity access management systems

A number of systems have been developed in the recent history to provide physical and virtual identity management systems; however, most have not been very successful. Furthermore, alongside increasing the level of awareness for the need to deploy interoperable physical and virtual identity management systems, there exists an immediate need for the establishment of clear standards and guidelines for the successful integration of the two mediums. The importance and motivation for the integration of the two mediums is discussed in this paper with respect to three perspectives: Security, which includes identity; User Experience, comprising Usability; and Acceptability, containing Accessibility. Not many systems abide by such guidelines for all of these perspectives; thus, our proposed system (UbIAMS) aims to change this and provide its users with access to their services from any identity access management system rather than merely providing access to a specific set of system

Middleware Technologies for Cloud of Things - a survey

The next wave of communication and applications rely on the new services provided by Internet of Things which is becoming an important aspect in human and machines future. The IoT services are a key solution for providing smart environments in homes, buildings and cities. In the era of a massive number of connected things and objects with a high grow rate, several challenges have been raised such as management, aggregation and storage for big produced data. In order to tackle some of these issues, cloud computing emerged to IoT as Cloud of Things (CoT) which provides virtually unlimited cloud services to enhance the large scale IoT platforms. There are several factors to be considered in design and implementation of a CoT platform. One of the most important and challenging problems is the heterogeneity of different objects. This problem can be addressed by deploying suitable "Middleware". Middleware sits between things and applications that make a reliable platform for communication among things with different interfaces, operating systems, and architectures. The main aim of this paper is to study the middleware technologies for CoT. Toward this end, we first present the main features and characteristics of middlewares. Next we study different architecture styles and service domains. Then we presents several middlewares that are suitable for CoT based platforms and lastly a list of current challenges and issues in design of CoT based middlewares is discussed.Comment: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352864817301268, Digital Communications and Networks, Elsevier (2017

Middleware Technologies for Cloud of Things - a survey

The next wave of communication and applications rely on the new services provided by Internet of Things which is becoming an important aspect in human and machines future. The IoT services are a key solution for providing smart environments in homes, buildings and cities. In the era of a massive number of connected things and objects with a high grow rate, several challenges have been raised such as management, aggregation and storage for big produced data. In order to tackle some of these issues, cloud computing emerged to IoT as Cloud of Things (CoT) which provides virtually unlimited cloud services to enhance the large scale IoT platforms. There are several factors to be considered in design and implementation of a CoT platform. One of the most important and challenging problems is the heterogeneity of different objects. This problem can be addressed by deploying suitable "Middleware". Middleware sits between things and applications that make a reliable platform for communication among things with different interfaces, operating systems, and architectures. The main aim of this paper is to study the middleware technologies for CoT. Toward this end, we first present the main features and characteristics of middlewares. Next we study different architecture styles and service domains. Then we presents several middlewares that are suitable for CoT based platforms and lastly a list of current challenges and issues in design of CoT based middlewares is discussed.Comment: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352864817301268, Digital Communications and Networks, Elsevier (2017