Pervasive Secure Content Delivery Networks Implementation

Over the years, communication networks have been shifting their focus from providing connectivity in a client/server model to providing a service or content. This shift has led to topic areas like Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Heterogeneous Wireless Mesh Networks, and Ubiquitous Computing. Furthermore, probably the broadest of these areas which embarks all is the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT is defined as an Internet where all physical entities (e.g., vehicles, appliances, smart phones, smart homes, computers, etc.), which we interact daily are connected and exchanging data among themselves and users. The IoT has become a global goal for companies, researchers, and users alike due to its different implementation and functional benefits: performance efficiency, coverage, economic and health. Due to the variety of devices which connect to it, it is expected that the IoT is composed of multiple technologies interacting together, to deliver a service. This technologies interactions renders an important challenge that must be overcome: how to communicate these technologies effectively and securely? The answer to this question is vital for a successful deployment of IoT and achievement of all the potential benefits that the IoT promises. This thesis proposes a SOA approach at the Network Layer to be able to integrate all technologies involved, in a transparent manner. The proposed set of solutions is composed of primarily the secure implementation of a unifying routing algorithm and a layered messaging model to standardize communication of all devices. Security is targeted to address the three main security concerns (i.e., confidentiality, integrity, and availability), with pervasive schemes that can be employed for any kind of device on the client, backbone, and server side. The implementation of such schemes is achieved by standard current security mechanisms (e.g., encryption), in combination with novel context and intelligent checks that detect compromised devices. Moreover, a decentralized content processing design is presented. In such design, content processing is handled at the client side, allowing server machines to serve more content, while being more reliable and capable of processing complete security checks on data and client integrity

Protecting Personal Private Information in Collaborative Environments

The ability to collaborate has always been vitally important to businesses and enterprises. With the availability of current networking and computing power, the creation of Collaborative Working Environments (CWEs) has allowed for this process to occur anytime over any geographical distance. Sharing information between individuals through collaborative environments creates new challenges in privacy protection for organizations and the members of organizations. This thesis confronts the problems when attempting to protect the personal private information of collaborating individuals. In this thesis, a privacy-by-policy approach is taken to addressing the issue of protecting private information within collaborative environments. A privacy-by-policy approach to privacy protection provides collaborating individuals with notice and choice surrounding their private information, in order to provide an individual with a level of control over how their information is to be used. To this end, a collaborative privacy architecture for providing privacy within a collaborative environment is presented. This architecture uses ontologies to express the static concept and relation definitions required for privacy and collaboration. The collaborative privacy architecture also contains a Collaborative Privacy Manager (CPM) service which handles changes in dynamic collaborative environments. The goals of this thesis are to provide privacy mechanisms for the non-client centric situation of collaborative working environments. This thesis also strives to provide privacy through technically enforceable and customizable privacy policies. To this end, individual collaborators are provided with access, modification rights, and transparency through the use of ontologies built into the architecture. Finally, individual collaborators are provided these privacy protections in a way that is easy to use and understand and use. A collaborative scenario as a test case is described to present how this architecture would benefit individuals and organizations when they are engaged in collaborative work. In this case study a university and hospital are engaged in collaborative research which involves the use of private information belonging to collaborators and patients from the hospital. This case study also highlights how different organizations can be under different sets of legislative guidelines and how these guidelines can be incorporated into the privacy architecture. Through this collaboration scenario an implementation of the collaborative privacy architecture is provided, along with results from semantic and privacy rule executions, and measurements of how actions carried out by the architecture perform under various conditions