On Software Standards and Solutions for a Trusted Internet of Things

We discuss a high-level model for software applications and services that can support a minimal set of human-centric trust management capabilities. We outline the unique set of challenges we must address if we are to attain a level of trust that will be required for a robust deployment of an IoT. We discuss the role of standards and how we can maximize the effectiveness of standards and device and service certification. We suggest a set of solutions for trust management that can support the unique security, safety, and privacy requirements of a robust IoT. Prominent among these solutions is the use of an older approach for access control, viz. the reference monitor, and blockchain technologies that can record trust and policy graphs and trust-related attributes for IoT devices and supporting services. An open, but governed trust blockchain can serve as a universal trusted oracle

Embedding smart software agents in resource constrained Internet of Things devices

[ES]Los sistemas de sensorización en combinación con herramientas de tratamiento y gestión inteligente de información, constituyen la base sobre la que se construirán las ciudades y entornos urbanos del futuro. Avanzar en la investigación y desarrollo de estos nuevos escenarios inteligentes, es fundamental a la hora de alcanzar los objetivos de eficiencia, integración, sostenibilidad y calidad de vida de las personas que habitan nuestras ciudades. Para alcanzar estos objetivos, es fundamental indagar en el desarrollo de dispositivos hardware más baratos, precisos e inteligentes que serán la base de los entornos inteligentes del futuro. Debido a las previsiones realizadas para los próximos años, la cantidad de dispositivos conectados a Internet será de hasta 7 dispositivos por cada persona en el planeta. Esta avalancha de dispositivos llevará asociada una avalancha de datos que tendrán que ser manejados y almacenados por los centros de procesamiento de datos. Por todo ello, avanzar en el diseño de herramientas para el procesamiento de datos inteligente, así como en nuevos dispositivos de sensorización, es una tarea de vital importancia para la viabilidad futura de los entornos conectados. Por ello, en este trabajo de tesis doctoral se propone un sistema inteligente basado en agentes embebidos en dispositivos inalámbricos con capacidades reducidas (memoria y capacidad de cómputo limitada), para entornos del Internet de las cosas (IoT) donde sea posible un procesamiento inteligente de datos. En particular, se presenta una novedosa arquitectura multi-agente enfocada a la gestión de los datos generados por los dispositivos IoT, sobre la que construir una capa de servicios adaptada a las diferentes necesidades de los distintos entornos donde será posible desplegar el sistema de sensorización. Con el objetivo de validad el sistema propuesto, se ha diseñado un caso de estudio basado en redes de sensores en un entorno IoT de eficiencia energética a través de la optimización del consumo de batería de una bicicleta eléctrica

Implementing Multi Agent Systems (MAS)-based trust and reputation in smart IoT environments : A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Lincoln University

The Internet of Things (IoT) provides advanced services by interconnecting a huge number of heterogeneous smart things (virtual or physical devices) through existing interoperable information and communication technologies. As IoT devices become more intelligent, they will have the ability to communicate and cooperate with each other. In doing so, enormous amount of sensitive data will flow within the network such as a credit card information, medical data, factory details, pictures and videos. With sensitive data flowing through the network, privacy becomes one of most important issues facing IoT. Studies of data sensitivity and privacy indicate the importance of evaluating the trustworthiness of IoT participants to maximize the satisfaction and the performance of the IoT applications. It is also important to maintain successful collaboration between the devices deployed in the network and ensure all devices operate in a trustworthy manner. This research aims to determine: How to select the best service provider in an IoT environment based on the trustworthiness and the reputation of the service provider? To achieve this, we proposed an IoT agent-based decentralized trust and reputation model IoT-CADM (Comprehensive Agent-based Decision-making Model for IoT) to select the best service providers for a particular service based on multi-context quality of services. IoT-CADM as a novel trust and reputation model, is developed for the smart multi-agent IoT environment to gather information from entities and score them using a new trust and reputation scoring mechanism. IoT-CADM aims to ensure that the service consumers are serviced by the best service providers in the IoT environment which in turn maximizes the service consumers’ satisfaction, which lead the IoT entities to operate and make-decisions on behalf of its owner in a trustworthy manner. To evaluate the performance of the proposed model against some other well-known models like ReGreT, SIoT, and R-D-C, we implemented a scenario based on the SIPOC Supply Chain approach developed using an agent development framework called JADE. This research used the TOPSIS approach to compare and rank the performance of these models based on different parameters that have been chosen carefully for fair comparison. The TOPSIS result confirmed that the proposed IoT-CADM has the highest performance. In addition, the model can be tuned to its parameters weight to adapt to varying scenarios in honest and dishonest agents’ environments

An autonomic agent trust model for IoT systems

AbstractThe IoT systems encounter more serious issues of security, reliability and availability. In this paper, we propose an autonomic agent trust model to decrease security concerns, increase reliability and credibility and ensure information collecting, sharing and processing in dynamic IoT environments. In order to build the credibility protection model for IoT systems, agents and agent platforms have to be built on all nodes. Agent-based node in IoT systems is independent, self-governing software and hardware integrated system. Introducing the agent technology to build systems could manage resources and regulate actions of node in order to maximize the benefit of the whole IoT system. Firstly, we analyze on the credibility of IoT systems and explain why IoT systems are difficult to achieve safe and reliable computing and service quality assurance mechanisms. Secondly, we provide the architecture of trustable agent and agency. After that, we propose a novel architecture named TAEC (Trustworthy Agent Execution Chip), which is to use the high-security, cost-effective software and hardware platform for the safe operation of Agent. The proposed approach is to install TAEC on each sensor node, which provides autonomic trusted hardware execution environment for agents