Applications of Context-Aware Systems in Enterprise Environments

In bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and corporate-owned, personally enabled (COPE) scenarios, employees’ devices store both enterprise and personal data, and have the ability to remotely access a secure enterprise network. While mobile devices enable users to access such resources in a pervasive manner, it also increases the risk of breaches for sensitive enterprise data as users may access the resources under insecure circumstances. That is, access authorizations may depend on the context in which the resources are accessed. In both scenarios, it is vital that the security of accessible enterprise content is preserved. In this work, we explore the use of contextual information to influence access control decisions within context-aware systems to ensure the security of sensitive enterprise data. We propose several context-aware systems that rely on a system of sensors in order to automatically adapt access to resources based on the security of users’ contexts. We investigate various types of mobile devices with varying embedded sensors, and leverage these technologies to extract contextual information from the environment. As a direct consequence, the technologies utilized determine the types of contextual access control policies that the context-aware systems are able to support and enforce. Specifically, the work proposes the use of devices pervaded in enterprise environments such as smartphones or WiFi access points to authenticate user positional information within indoor environments as well as user identities

Context-Based Access for Infrequent Requests in Tanzania\u27s Health Care System

Access control is an important aspect of any information system. It is a way of ensuring that users can only access what they are authorised to and no more. This can be achieved by granting users access to resources based on pre-defined organisational and legislative rules. Although access control has been extensively studied, and as a result, a wide range of access control models, mechanisms and systems have been proposed, specific access control requirements for healthcare systems that needs to support the continuity of care in an accountable manner have not been addressed. This results in a gap between what is required by the application domain and what is actually practised, and thus access control solutions implemented for the domain become too restrictive. The continuity of care is defined as the delivery of seamless health care services to patients through integration, coordination and sharing of information between providers. This thesis, therefore, designs a context-based access control model that allows healthcare professionals to bypass access rules in an accountable manner in case of an infrequent access request involving an emergency situation. This research uses the Tanzania\u27s healthcare system as a case study domain

Machine Learning in IoT Security:Current Solutions and Future Challenges

The future Internet of Things (IoT) will have a deep economical, commercial and social impact on our lives. The participating nodes in IoT networks are usually resource-constrained, which makes them luring targets for cyber attacks. In this regard, extensive efforts have been made to address the security and privacy issues in IoT networks primarily through traditional cryptographic approaches. However, the unique characteristics of IoT nodes render the existing solutions insufficient to encompass the entire security spectrum of the IoT networks. This is, at least in part, because of the resource constraints, heterogeneity, massive real-time data generated by the IoT devices, and the extensively dynamic behavior of the networks. Therefore, Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) techniques, which are able to provide embedded intelligence in the IoT devices and networks, are leveraged to cope with different security problems. In this paper, we systematically review the security requirements, attack vectors, and the current security solutions for the IoT networks. We then shed light on the gaps in these security solutions that call for ML and DL approaches. We also discuss in detail the existing ML and DL solutions for addressing different security problems in IoT networks. At last, based on the detailed investigation of the existing solutions in the literature, we discuss the future research directions for ML- and DL-based IoT security

Content-Based Access Control

In conventional database, the most popular access control model specifies policies explicitly for each role of every user against each data object manually. Nowadays, in large-scale content-centric data sharing, conventional approaches could be impractical due to exponential explosion of the data growth and the sensitivity of data objects. What's more, conventional database access control policy will not be functional when the semantic content of data is expected to play a role in access decisions. Users are often over-privileged, and ex post facto auditing is enforced to detect misuse of the privileges. Unfortunately, it is usually difficult to reverse the damage, as (large amount of) data has been disclosed already. In this dissertation, we first introduce Content-Based Access Control (CBAC), an innovative access control model for content-centric information sharing. As a complement to conventional access control models, the CBAC model makes access control decisions based on the content similarity between user credentials and data content automatically. In CBAC, each user is allowed by a metarule to access "a subset" of the designated data objects of a content-centric database, while the boundary of the subset is dynamically determined by the textual content of data objects. We then present an enforcement mechanism for CBAC that exploits Oracles Virtual Private Database (VPD) to implement a row-wise access control and to prevent data objects from being abused by unnecessary access admission. To further improve the performance of the proposed approach, we introduce a content-based blocking mechanism to improve the efficiency of CBAC enforcement to further reveal a more relevant part of the data objects comparing with only using the user credentials and data content. We also utilized several tagging mechanisms for more accurate textual content matching for short text snippets (e.g. short VarChar attributes) to extract topics other than pure word occurrences to represent the content of data. In the tagging mechanism, the similarity of content is calculated not purely dependent on the word occurrences but the semantic topics underneath the text content. Experimental results show that CBAC makes accurate access control decisions with a small overhead

Exploring the Essential Medicines List Concept

Background: Access to medicines is a basic human right. The World Health Organization (WHO) Model List of Essential Medicines was created in 1977, to promote access to essential medicines that satisfy the priority health care needs of the population. In this day and age, access to safe and affordable medicines is not guaranteed to all. There exists global inequality of access to lifesaving or essential medicines. This is referred to by the WHO as the ‘global drug gap’, in which approximately one third of the global population still does not have access to basic medicines. Contributing to the disparity in access, are rising pharmaceutical expenditures and globalisation of complex pharmaceutical supply chain networks. This has resulted in countries of all economies and geographical regions sourcing their medicines from common sources. Therefore, challenges accessing unavailable medicines have become a shared experience, as demonstrated by the relatively recent emergence and recurrence of global drug shortage crises. The WHO framework for access to essential medicines, which considers rational selection of medicines, affordable prices, sustainable financing, and reliable health and supply systems, was used as a theoretical framework to explore the gap in access to medicines. Aims and Objectives: Aim: To explore stakeholder views about the concept of essential medicines. Objectives: (1) To explore the application of the Essential Medicines List (EML) concept and how this was associated with access to essential medicines. (2) To explore the factors that influence access to essential medicines, and understand the roles of international key stakeholders involved in this process. (3) To explore what constitutes an “essential” medicine, and how the EML concept functions in a high income country (HIC) context. Content of This Thesis This thesis is made up of 4 chapters. Chapter 1 contains the background and a review of the literature on access to essential medicines. The challenges identified in chapter 1 lead to the exploration of global perspectives on the supply and management of essential medicines in chapter 2. The qualitative study in chapter 3 describes what constitutes an essential medicine for stakeholders in a high income country (HIC). Lastly, chapter 4 contains general discussions and conclusions from the work described in this thesis. Methods: A narrative literature review (chapter 1) was performed to explore how the application of the EML concept is associated with access to essential medicines. A search strategy developed from the principles of the WHO access to medicines framework was used to identify primary studies from Medline, Embase and PubMed. A qualitative study was conducted to explore perspectives of international (chapter 2) and Australian (chapter 3) key stakeholders about the pharmaceutical supply chain, on the application and relevance of EML concept and what makes a medicine essential. Snowball sampling was used to recruit decision makers, leaders or senior managers involved in medicines decision making across seven stakeholder groups. Stakeholders included: government, health care providers, academics, consumer groups, non-profit organisations, pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesaler/distributors. Forty-seven semi structured interviews were conducted face-to-face, via Skype or telephone, audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interviews were conducted until thematic saturation was achieved. Data were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The comprehensive theory of collaboration was applied after the grounded theory analysis to organise and understand results within a management context. In addition, chapter 2 used the Ishikawa fishbone diagram to illustrate the complexities of the pharmaceutical supply chain. Meanwhile, chapter 3 illustrated the conceptual model derived from the results. Key Findings: Chapter 1- A literature review showed that there has been improved access to essential medicines for many populations. Findings showed EMLs help promote advocacy and provide reliable evidence at the health systems level. However, there was variable use of EMLs at the health services delivery level (i.e. for a patient at the point of care). Decision making around standard treatment guidelines and EMLs were often not aligned with procurement and management strategies within the supply chain. The literature review showed that accessing medicines was complex. Studies were often not well-designed, had narrow research objectives and few qualitative studies were conducted. Studies focused on resource limited settings in LMICs and scarce data was available for EMLs in HICs. Chapter 2- Qualitative interviews with international stakeholders described the complexities involved in managing the global pharmaceutical supply chain. While stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities were inter-connected, therapeutic decision making was often separated from logistic management of the pharmaceutical supply chain due to potential conflicts of interest. This created many gaps and inconsistencies around pricing and costs, planning and reactivity, communication and transparency, and contributed to difficulties building trust and consistency between stakeholders. Adding to this complexity, individualised or patient-centred care approaches have emphasised the need for consumer choice and demand a wide range of products that has become increasingly challenging to manage. Therefore, drug shortages have highlighted the opportunity for collaborative alliances to identify, prioritise, and manage vulnerabilities in the supply chain to prevent or mitigate patient harm as a result of restricted access to medicines. In particular, wholesalers and distributors were identified as potentially having more valuable roles in managing supply disruptions (e.g. redistribution) and facilitating information exchange between stakeholders (e.g. forecasting or confirming at what level of the system a shortage occurs). Participants also suggested designating drug shortage experts or liaison to manage and communicate shortages, especially to consumers and health providers. Chapter 3- Qualitative interviews with Australian stakeholders demonstrated that the different perceived functions of EMLs seemed to be stratified depending on whether the decision making context was at a health systems level or at an individual level (i.e., for a patient at the point of care). EMLs can function as reimbursement lists at the health systems level, or hospital formularies at the health services level. Meanwhile, non-reimbursed or off-formulary medicines were available to consumers who were willing and able to pay if they were deemed essential to individuals. Conversely, some medicines can be deemed essential but were not available or affordable to individuals. The wide range of views in this study, highlight the complexities of decision-making processes involved in developing and managing EMLs, which has been compounded by the expanding consumer need to have a range of therapeutic options. These findings emphasise the context within the health system determines for whom a medicine is deemed essential. Conclusion: Prior to this thesis, EMLs have been studied with narrow research objectives and mainly in LMICs. This body of research was the first to explore how the application and management of EMLs effected access to medicines, from a broad range of stakeholder views involved in both therapeutic decision making and logistics management. Furthermore, it was also a rare study that examined the EML concept within HIC contexts. Findings from this body of work demonstrated different perceived functions of the EML. Furthermore, it also questioned whether the term ‘essential’ was appropriate and reflected how the EML was used. While EMLs can be useful to guide evidence based decision making for reimbursement at the systems level, the variations in the notion of essential at the individual level is influenced by an individual’s choice. Therefore, this highlights the importance of guiding (or limiting) consumer choice with appropriate and accessible information, to help individuals make informed and responsible decisions. This research confirmed that the access to medicines gap continues to be problematic. The pharmaceutical supply chain has been unable to handle drug shortages adequately. Therefore, in order to sustain patient-centred care practices, concessions by all stakeholders must be made if the supply chain is to withstand global economic, political, and ecological instability. Multi-stakeholder engagement, transparent processes, innovative communication pathways, and EML approaches offer potential solutions to mitigate supply chain disruptions. Future approaches should align decision making priorities with procurement practices. Decision makers and supply chain managers have a valuable opportunity to reflect and understand how the current system is functioning, in order to develop foundations for improved processes, and innovative and cooperative platforms to interact and network

Impact of access control and copyright in e-learning from user’s perspective in the United Kingdom

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe widespread adoption of E-Learning has largely been driven by the recommendations of educational technologists seeking to convey the benefits of E-Learning as a valuable accessory to teaching and possible solution for distance-based education. Research in the E-Learning domain has mainly focused on providing and delivering content andinfrastructure. Security issues are usually not taken as central concern in most implementations either because systems are usually deployed in controlled environments, or because they take the one-to-one tutoring approach, not requiring strict security measures. The scope of this research work is to investigate the impact of Access Control and Copyright in E-Learning system. An extensive literature review, theories from the field of information systems, psychology and cognitive sciences, distance and online learning, as well as existing E-Learning models show that research in E-learning is still hardly concerned with the issues of security. It is obvious that E-learning receives a new meaning as technology advances and business strategies change. The trends of learning methods have also led to the adjustment of National Curriculum and standards. However, research has also shown that any strategy or development supported by the Internet requires security and is therefore faced with challenges. This thesis is divided into six Chapters. Chapter 1 sets the scene for the research rationale and hypotheses, and identifies the aims and objectives. Chapter 2 presents the theoretical background and literature review. Chapter 3 is an in-depth review of the methods and methodology with clear justification of their adaptation and explains the underlying principles. Chapter 4 is based on the results and limitations obtained from the six case studies observations supported with literature review and ten existing models, while Chapter 5 is focused on the questionnaire survey. Chapter 6 describes the proposed Dynamic E-Learning Access Control and Copyright Framework (DEACCF) and the mapping of the threats from the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) Risk Analysis and Management Method (CRAMM) to Annualised Loss Expectancy (ALE). Chapter 7 presents the conclusions and recommendations, and the contribution to knowledge with further development plans for future work

Solar Power System Plaing & Design

Photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) systems for the conversion of solar energy into electricity are technologically robust, scalable, and geographically dispersed, and they possess enormous potential as sustainable energy sources. Systematic planning and design considering various factors and constraints are necessary for the successful deployment of PV and CSP systems. This book on solar power system planning and design includes 14 publications from esteemed research groups worldwide. The research and review papers in this Special Issue fall within the following broad categories: resource assessments, site evaluations, system design, performance assessments, and feasibility studies

Exploration of Miniature Flexible Devices Empowered by Van Der Waals Material

This research mainly focuses on the fabrication of miniature flexible devices empowered by van der Waals materials. Through the extensive experiments contained in this thesis, by exploring the characteristics of van der Waals materials, optimizing the manufacturing process of lithography technology, and characterizing the photoelectric performance of micro devices, this thesis has promoted the development of micro flexible device manufacturing and expanded its applications in the fields of biological detection, medical treatment, and environmental monitoring. We introduced a miniature van der Waals semiconductor empowered vertical color sensor, which saves three times the volume space compared to the traditional planer color sensor and includes multiple optical aberration correction functions as well. Such a small red, green, and blue (RGB) color sensor can be applied in bionic eyes, breaking through the limitations of existing black and white recognition. On this basis, we further explored the stretchability of two-dimensional materials represented by MoS2. We proposed a chemical treatment method combined with gold nanoparticles and (3-mercaptopropyl)trimethoxysilane (MPTMS) to realize the relocation of flexible micro devices. This method improves the adhesion between the material layer and the flexible substrate (PDMS), which significantly increases the flexible device stretchability, and prolongs its service life. Through the above work, this thesis explores the van der Waals materials’ properties, and optimizes the manufacturing process of micro devices, further exerts the advantages of material flexibility, therefore provides more possibilities for the development of smart wearable devices, biomedical detection, and other fields