A need for an integrative security model for semantic stream reasoning systems

State-of-the-art security frameworks have been extensively addressing security issues for web resources, agents and services in the Semantic Web. The provision of Stream Reasoning as a new area spanning Semantic Web and Data Stream Management Systems has eventually opened up new challenges. Namely, their decentralized nature, the metadata descriptions, the number of users, agents, and services, make securing Stream Reasoning systems difficult to handle. Thus, there is an inherent need of developing new security models which will handle security and automate security mechanisms to a more autonomous system that supports complex and dynamic relationships between data, clients and service providers. We plan to validate our approach on a typical application of stream data, on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In particular, WSNs for water quality monitoring will serve as a case study. The paper describes the initial findings and research plan for building a consistent security model for stream reasoning systems

A need for an integrative security model for semantic stream reasoning systems

State-of-the-art security frameworks have been extensively addressing security issues for web resources, agents and services in the Semantic Web. The provision of Stream Reasoning as a new area spanning Semantic Web and Data Stream Management Systems has eventually opened up new challenges. Namely, their decentralized nature, the metadata descriptions, the number of users, agents, and services, make securing Stream Reasoning systems difficult to handle. Thus, there is an inherent need of developing new security models which will handle security and automate security mechanisms to a more autonomous system that supports complex and dynamic relationships between data, clients and service providers. We plan to validate our approach on a typical application of stream data, on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In particular, WSNs for water quality monitoring will serve as a case study. The paper describes the initial findings and research plan for building a consistent security model for stream reasoning systems

A Transparent, Reputation-Based Architecture for Semantic Web Annotation

New forms of conceiving the web such as web 2.0 and the semantic web have emerged for numerous purposes ranging from professional activities to leisure. The semantic web is based on associating concepts with web pages, rather than only identifying hyperlinks and repeated literals. ITACA is a project whose aim is to add semantic annotations to web pages, where semantic annotations are Wikipedia URLs. Therefore, users can write, read and vote on semantic annotations of a webpage. Semantic annotations of a webpage are ranked according to users' votes. Building upon the ITACA project, we propose a transparent, reputation-based architecture. With this proposal, semantic annotations are stored in the users' local machines instead of web servers, so that web servers transparency is preserved. To achieve transparency, an indexing server is added to the architecture to locate semantic annotations. Moreover, users are grouped into reputation domains, providing accurate semantic annotation ranking when retrieving annotations of a web page. Cache copies of semantic annotations in annotation servers are done to improve eficiency of the algorithm, reducing the number of sent messages

Innovative Techniques for the Implementation of Adaptive Mobile Learning Using the Semantic Web

Adaptive Mobile Learning has constantly faced many challenges in order to make course learning more adaptive. This research presents a conceptual framework for using the Semantic Web to obtain students’ data from other educational institutions, enabling the educational institutions to communicate and exchange students’ data. We then can use this information to adjust the students’ profiles and modify their learning paths. Semantic Web will create a more personalized dynamic course for each student according to his/her ability, educational level, and experience. Through the Semantic Web, our goal is to create an adaptive learning system that takes into consideration previously completed courses, to count the completed topics, and then adjust the leaning path graph accordingly to get a new shortest path. We have applied the developed model on our system. Then, we tested the students on our system and a control system to measure the improvements in the students’ learning. We also have analyzed the results collected from the AML Group and the Control Group. The AML system provided a 44.80% improvement over the Control System. The experimental results demonstrate that Semantic Web can be used with adaptive mobile learning system (AML) in order to enhance the students’ learning experience and improve their academic performance

A Transparent, Reputation-Based Architecture for Semantic Web Annotation

New forms of conceiving the web such as web 2.0 and the semantic web have emerged for numerous purposes ranging from professional activities to leisure. The semantic web is based on associating concepts with web pages, rather than only identifying hyperlinks and repeated literals. ITACA is a project whose aim is to add semantic annotations to web pages, where semantic annotations are Wikipedia URLs. Therefore, users can write, read and vote on semantic annotations of a webpage. Semantic annotations of a webpage are ranked according to users' votes. Building upon the ITACA project, we propose a transparent, reputation-based architecture. With this proposal, semantic annotations are stored in the users' local machines instead of web servers, so that web servers transparency is preserved. To achieve transparency, an indexing server is added to the architecture to locate semantic annotations. Moreover, users are grouped into reputation domains, providing accurate semantic annotation ranking when retrieving annotations of a web page. Cache copies of semantic annotations in annotation servers are done to improve eficiency of the algorithm, reducing the number of sent messages

Trust negotiation policy management for service-oriented applications

Service-oriented architectures (SOA), and in particular Web services, have quickly become a popular technology to connect applications both within and across enterprise boundaries. However, as services are increasingly used to implement critical functionality, security has become an important concern impeding the widespread adoption of SOA. Trust negotiation is an approach to access control that may be applied in scenarios where service requesters are often unknown in advance, such as for services available via the public Internet. Rather than relying on requesters' identities, trust negotiation makes access decisions based on the level of trust established between the requester and the provider in a negotiation, during which the parties exchange credentials, which are signed assertions that describe some attributes of the owner. However, managing the evolution of trust negotiation policies is a difficult problem that has not been sufficiently addressed to date. Access control policies have a lifecycle, and they are revised based on applicable business policies. Additionally, because a trust relationship established in a trust negotiation may be long lasting, their evolution must also be managed. Simply allowing a negotiation to continue according to an old policy may be undesirable, especially if new important constraints have been added. In this thesis, we introduce a model-driven trust negotiation framework for service-oriented applications. The framework employs a model for trust negotiation, based on state machines, that allows automated generation of the control structures necessary to enforce trust negotiation policies from the visual model of the policy. Our policy model also supports lifecycle management. We provide sets of operations to modify policies and to manage ongoing negotiations, and operators for identifying and managing impacts of changes to trust negotiation policies on ongoing trust negotiations. The framework presented in the thesis has been implemented in the Trust-Serv prototype, which leverages industry specifications such as WS-Security and WS-Trust to offer a container-centric mechanism for deploying trust negotiation that is transparent to the services being protected