Pervasive Security

The Pervasive Security research area of BT's Networks Research Centre is solving the security problems facing the deployment of pervasive computing technology. We see security as an enabler that will allow the acceptance and maintain the value of services built upon pervasive devices such as cameras, sensors and RFID readers.

We believe that the real value of these pervasive information systems will come from large scale collaboration and sharing of information. Today's highly vertical machine-to-machine deployments must evolve into re-usable components supporting multiple parties and services in a standards-based framework. To achieve this we must build systems that:

Allow the re-use of pervasive devices, processing platforms and information systems across multiple services
Allow multiple parties to collaborate and share physical and information resources in the operation of processes

Key to the success of such highly collaborative systems is security. The value of these networks is driven by the participation. Parties need to be assured that their interests are protected. This can take many forms, such as:

The protection of personal privacy - for example in location based systems such as road charging
The protection and secure trading of information that is commercially sensitive or has economic value
The integrity of data and components in the network. If we have to make business decisions then we must be able to assess the risk of attacks that corrupt or inject false information into the network.
The availability of systems to maintain the operation of business processes or critical services. The systems need to be designed to be resilient or adaptive to attacks and failures.

Project List

We participate in two collaborative research projects, looking at pervasive information systems in different application domains. This allows us to examine some of the wider questions around pervasive information architectures and security as well as focussing on the requirements of specific of technologies and applications.

Transport Information Monitoring Environment (TIME)

BT is collaborating with the University of Cambridge in a five year EPSRC funded project to develop event-based middleware and contextual models for the collection and use of transportation information.

Please click here for more details of the TIME project

Building RFID Solutions for the Global Environment (BRIDGE)

BRIDGE is an EU 6th Framework Integrated Project involving 31 partners including RFID end users, solution providers, industrial and academic research and industry bodies. The aim of BRIDGE is to overcome the barriers to the widespread deployment of RFID throughout Europe.

Please click here for more details of the BRIDGE project.

People

Trevor Burbridge - Research area manager and BT contact for TIME; Andrea Soppera - BT leader for BRIDGE project; Jeff Farr; David Evans - Research Associate from the University of Cambridge working at BT Adastral Park on the TIME project.

Recent Publications

David Molnar, Andrea Soppera & David Wagner, "Privacy for RFID Through Trusted Computing", Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, 2005. [[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~dmolnar/papers/wpes05-camera.pdf][PDF]
Andrea Soppera & Trevor Burbridge, "Temporal Privacy Control for Location-Based Services", UbiNet^? final workshop, 2006. PDF
David Molnar, Andrea Soppera & David Wagner, "A Scalable, Delegatable Pseudonym Protocol Enabling Ownership Transfer of RFID Tags", Selected Areas of Cryptography, 2005. PDF
Andrea Soppera & Trevor Burbridge, "Maintaining privacy in pervasive computing - enabling acceptance of sensor-based services (extended version)", Chapter from "Intelligent Spaces: The Application of Pervasive ICT", edited by Alan Steventon & Steve Wright, Springer Verlag, 2006.
Andrea Soppera, Trevor Burbridge & David Molnar, "RFID Security and Privacy - Issues, Standards and Solutions", Chapter from "Intelligent Spaces: The Application of Pervasive ICT", edited by Alan Steventon & Steve Wright, Springer Verlag, 2006.
Andrea Soppera & Trevor Burbridge, "Wireless Identification - Privacy and Security", BT Technology Journal, Vol.23, No.4, October 2005.
Andrea Soppera and Trevor Burbridge, "Maintaining privacy in pervasive computing - enabling acceptance of sensor-based services", BT Technology Journal, Vol.22, No.3, July 2004.