A Survey of Access Control Models in Wireless Sensor Networks

Copyright 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted considerable interest in the research community, because of their wide range of applications. However, due to the distributed nature of WSNs and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. Resource constraints in sensor nodes mean that security mechanisms with a large overhead of computation and communication are impractical to use in WSNs; security in sensor networks is, therefore, a challenge. Access control is a critical security service that offers the appropriate access privileges to legitimate users and prevents illegitimate users from unauthorized access. However, access control has not received much attention in the context of WSNs. This paper provides an overview of security threats and attacks, outlines the security requirements and presents a state-of-the-art survey on access control models, including a comparison and evaluation based on their characteristics in WSNs. Potential challenging issues for access control schemes in WSNs are also discussed.Peer reviewe

The Development of a graduate course on identity management for the Department of Networking, Security, and Systems Administration

Digital identities are being utilized more than ever as a means to authenticate computer users in order to control access to systems, web services, and networks. To maintain these digital identities, administrators turn to Identity Management solutions to offer protection for users, business partners, and networks. This paper proposes an analysis of Identity Management to be accomplished in the form of a graduate level course of study for a ten-week period for the Networking, Security, and Systems Administration department at Rochester Institute of Technology. This course will be designed for this department because of its emphasis on securing, protecting, and managing the identities of users within and across networks. Much of the security-related courses offered by the department focus primarily on security within enterprises. Therefore, Identity Management, a topic that is becoming more popular within enterprises each day, would compliment these courses. Students that enroll in this course will be more equipped to satisfy the needs of modern enterprises when they graduate because they will have a better understanding of how to address security issues that involve managing user identities across networks, systems, and enterprises. This course will focus on several aspects of Identity Management and its use in enterprises today. Covered during the course will be the frameworks of Identity Management, for instance, Liberty Identity Federation Framework and OASIS SAML 2.0; the Identity Management models; and some of the major Identity Management solutions that are in use today such as Liberty Alliance, Microsoft Passport, and Shibboleth. This course will also provide the opportunity to gain hands on experience by facilitating exemplar technologies used in laboratory investigations

Age-appropriate password "best practice'' ontologies for early educators and parents

Many mobile apps are developed specifically for use by children. As a consequence, children become actors in world where they use passwords to authenticate themselves from a very young age. As such, there is a need for guidance to inform educators and parents about how to prepare children for responsible password practice. Very little attention has been paid to determining which password-related principles young children should know, and the age at which this information should be imparted. To address this deficiency, we commenced by deriving an ontology of “best practice” password principles from official sources. These password principles encode essential knowledge for password users of all ages and provide a benchmark that can be used to ground a set of age-appropriate ontologies. We compared this benchmark “good practice” ontology to the advice provided by a wide-ranging snapshot of password-related children’s books and parents’ online resources. We then consulted the research literature to identify the skills required to understand and apply each principle, and removed those that were unsuitable for young children. We then consulted parents of young children to help us to confirm the classification of the ontology’s principles in terms of age appropriateness. Parents also helped us to rephrase each principle to maximise accessibility and understandability for each age group. We conclude with our final set of three age-appropriate password best practice ontologies as a helpful resource for early education professionals and parents

Ehrlichia and Spotted Fever Group Rickettsiae Surveillance in Amblyomma americanum in Virginia Through Use of a Novel Six-Plex Real-Time PCR Assay

The population of the lone star tick Amblyomma americanum has expanded in North America over the last several decades. It is known to be an aggressive and nondiscriminatory biter and is by far the most common human-biting tick encountered in Virginia. Few studies of human pathogen prevalence in ticks have been conducted in our state since the mid-twentieth century. We developed a six-plex real-time PCR assay to detect three Ehrlichia species (E. chaffeensis, E. ewingii, and Panola Mountain Ehrlichia) and three spotted fever group Rickettsiae (SFGR; R. amblyommii, R. parkeri, and R. rickettsii) and used it to test A. americanum from around the state. Our studies revealed a presence of all three Ehrlichia species (0–24.5%) and a high prevalence (50–80%) of R. amblyommii, a presumptively nonpathogenic SFGR, in all regions surveyed. R. parkeri, previously only detected in Virginia’s Amblyomma maculatum ticks, was found in A. americanum in several surveyed areas within two regions having established A. maculatum populations. R. rickettsii was not found in any sample tested. Our study provides the first state-wide screening of A. americanum ticks in recent history and indicates that human exposure to R. amblyommii and to Ehrlichiae may be common. The high prevalence of R. amblyommii, serological cross-reactivity of all SFGR members, and the apparent rarity of R. rickettsii in human biting ticks across the eastern United States suggest that clinical cases of tick-borne disease, including ehrlichiosis, may be commonly misdiagnosed as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and that suspicion of other SFGR as well as Ehrlichia should be increased. These data may be of relevance to other regions where A. americanum is prevalent

A Comparison of the Social-Adaptive Perspective and Functionalist Perspective on Guilt and Shame

Within the field of guilt and shame two competing perspectives have been advanced. The first, the social-adaptive perspective, proposes that guilt is an inherently adaptive emotion and shame is an inherently maladaptive emotion. Thus, those interested in moral character development and psychopathology should work to increase an individual’s guilt-proneness and decrease an individual’s shame-proneness. The functionalist perspective, in contrast, argues that both guilt and shame can serve a person adaptively or maladaptively—depending on the situational appropriateness, duration, intensity, and so forth. This paper reviews the research conducted supporting both positions; critiques some issues with the most widely used guilt- and shame-proneness measure in the social-adaptive research (the TOSCA) and discusses the differences in results found when assessing guilt and shame at the state versus trait level. The conclusion drawn is that although there is broad support for the functionalist perspective across a wide variety of state and trait guilt/shame studies, the functionalist perspective does not yet have the wealth of data supporting it that has been generated by the social-adaptive perspective using the TOSCA. Thus, before a dominant perspective can be identified, researchers need to (1) do more research assessing how the social-adaptive perspective compares to the functionalist perspective at the state level and (2) do more trait research within the functionalist perspective to compare functionalist guilt- and shame-proneness measures with the TOSCA

Hidden Power: Journalistic Representations of Mental Health Labels

Individuals with disabilities make up the largest minority group in the U.S., and the language used to construct representations of these individuals has the ability to perpetuate or diminish stereotypes about these individuals. The purpose of this case study was to explore and describe the representations of mental health in online newspaper articles published by three national publications – The Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used as the methodological framework, including an analysis of semiotic choices, dominant perspectives, and causality. The case study allowed for data collection using the key terms mental health and mental illness from the three online newspapers, with a total of 33 articles published between July 1, 2018 and December 31, 2018. The findings identified that most discussions of mental health and mental illness align with a medical model frame and incorporate medicalized lexicon. Dominant perspectives of causality within articles remain with law enforcement, lawmakers, and legal advisors. Overlexicalization was evident, and the use of mental health and mental illness was more often stated with semi-formal or formal language. Findings also suggest that individuals with mental health labels are often labeled as an aggressor with specific individuals or local citizens as their victims. Potential ramifications of hidden power, as well as recommendations on altering the use of the key terms and sources used within an article are discussed

Secure Virtualization and Multicore Platforms State-of-the-Art report

SVaM

Strategic Self-Presentation on Social Networking Sites

Contemporarily social networking sites utilize an idealized self-presentation to reach out to diverse and individual users. The information communicated across users has drifted to incorporate unanticipated gains of reforms focusing on empowering users to have total control of their account and profile information. Constructing a self-presentation in online social networking requires the collection of content, layout and design to reflect personality and goals. This study tends to present the relative impact of various self-presentation styles on improving the quality of services afforded by social networking sites. Findings based on the dominant self-presentation such as self-promotion, ingratiation, exemplification, supplication, and intimidation were expressed in terms of impression and behavior as well as their impeding risk. Findings on self-presentation on social networking sites confines to the pinning effect of socializing with other online users via online social networking sites such as Facebook. Keywords: Self-presentation, Facebook, Social networking, Networking community, Account information

A quantitative narrative on movement, disease and patch exploitation in nesting agent groups

Abstract Animal relocation data has recently become considerably more ubiquitous, finely structured (collection frequencies measured in minutes) and co-variate rich (physiology of individuals, environmental and landscape information, and accelerometer data). To better understand the impacts of ecological interactions, individual movement and disease on global change ecology, including wildlife management and conservation, it is important to have simulators that will provide demographic, movement, and epidemiology null models against which to compare patterns observed in empirical systems. Such models may then be used to develop quantitative narratives that enhance our intuition and understanding of the relationship between population structure and generative processes: in essence, along with empirical and experimental narratives, quantitative narratives are used to advance ecological epistemology. Here we describe a simulator that accounts for the influence of consumer-resource interactions, existence of social groups anchored around a central location, territoriality, group-switching behavior, and disease dynamics on population size. We use this simulator to develop new and reinforce existing quantitative narratives and point out areas for future study. Author summary The health and viability of species are of considerable concern to all nature lovers. Population models are central to our efforts to assess the numerical and ecological status of species and threats posed by climate change. Models, however, are crude caricatures of complex ecological systems. So how do we construct reliable assessment models able to capture processes essential to predicating the impacts of global change on population viability without getting tied up in their vast complexities? We broach this question and demonstrate how models focusing at the level of the individual (i.e., agent-based models) are tools for developing robust, narratives to augment narratives arising purely from empirical data sources and experimental outcomes. We do this in the context of nesting social groups, foraging for food, while exhibiting territoriality and group-switching behavior; and, we evaluate the impact of disease on the viability of such populations

Towards a development of a users’ ratified acceptance of multi-biometrics intentions model (RAMIM): Initial empirical results

User authentication is a continuous balance between the level of invasiveness and system security. Password protection has been the most widely user authentication approach used, however, it is easily compromised. Biometrics authentication devices have been implemented as less compromised approach. This paper reports on initial results of user perceptions about their acceptance of a multi-biometrics authentication approach in the context of elearning systems. Specifically, this paper reports on the initial empirical results on the development of a learners’ Ratified Acceptance of Multibiometrics Intentions Model (RAMIM). The model proposed look at the contributions of learners’ code of conduct awareness, perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, and ethical decision making to their intention to use multi-biometrics for authentication during e-learning exams. The study participants included 97 managers from service oriented organization and government agencies who attended e-learning courses. Results demonstrated high reliability for all constructs measured and indicated that perceived easeof-use and perceived usefulness are significant contributors to learners’ intention to use multi-biometrics. Conversely, code of conduct awareness appears to have little or no contribution on learners’ intention to use multibiometrics, while learners’ ethical decision making appears to have marginal contribution