Guest editorial

Citation

Hyuk Park, J., Gritzalis, S. and Hsu, C.-H. (2009), "Guest editorial", Internet Research, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr.2009.17219baa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Internet Research, Volume 19, Issue 2

Intelligent ubiquitous computing (IUC) is emerging rapidly as an exciting new paradigm including pervasive computing, wireless communication and ambient intelligence to provide computing and communication services any time and anywhere. It usually refers to the creation and deployment of computing technology in such a way that it becomes an invisible part of the fabric of everyday life and commerce. As ubiquitous computing presents a new trend of information and communication technologies for connecting cyber and physical domains, in such era, computers in the traditional sense gradually fade from view. Namely, information and communication mediated by computers is available anywhere and anytime through devices that are embedded in our environment, completely inter-connected, intuitive, effortlessly portable and constantly available.

Although ubiquitous computing presents exciting enabling opportunities, the benefits will only be reaped if security aspects can be appropriately addressed. As a result, to realize the advantages of intelligent services in ubiquitous environments, it requires the security issue of its services and applications to be suitable. Therefore, the security of ubiquitous computing is an important challenge for commerce, the public sector, academia and the individuals. For example, threats exploiting infirmities of user interfaces, operating systems, networks, and wireless communications give rise to new concerns about loss of confidentiality, integrity, privacy, and availability. How can these risks be avoided to an acceptable level? This special issue is intended to foster the dissemination of state-of-the-art research in the area of secure ubiquitous and intelligent environment including security models, security systems, application services, and novel applications associated with its utilization as that security and privacy is the indefeasible right of individuals to control the ways in which personal information is obtained, processed, distributed, shared, and used by any other entity.

The contributed submissions of this special issue include extended work of the selected papers originally presented at the second International Workshop on Trustworthiness, Reliability and Services in Ubiquitous and Sensor Networks (TRUST’07), as well as the Third International Symposium on Security in Ubiquitous Computing (SecUbiq-07), both held at Taipei, Taiwan; an invited paper contributed by Rodrigo Roman and Javier Lopez; and papers from external submissions. The papers selected for this issue not only contribute valuable insights and results but also have particular relevance to the security and ubiquitous computing community. All of them present high quality results for tackling problems arising from the ever-growing intelligent and ubiquitous services.

This special issue includes seven papers from researchers in Korea, the UK, USA, Taiwan, Greece, Canada, Pakistan and Spain, who have demonstrated the effectiveness and efficiency of a variety of security issues and applications in different areas of intelligent and ubiquitous computing.

Shunshan Piao, Jeongmin Park and Eunseok Lee in their paper entitled “Problem localization using probabilistic dependency analysis for automated system management in ubiquitous computing” addresses problem localization for learning knowledge in dynamic environment. Their approach is based on Bayesian Learning to describe a system as a hierarchical dependency network, then determining root causes of problems via inductive and deductive inferences on the network as well as predicting potential problems at run time. The authors show that using ordering parameters as input of network learning can reduce learning time and maintains accuracy in diverse domains, especially for the cases of large number of parameters, hence improving efficiency and accuracy of problem localization. The proposed approach is also applicable to conduct automated system management in complex distributed system and improve system reliability.

The paper by U.M. Mbanaso, G.S. Cooper, David Chadwick and Anne Anderson entitled “Obligations of trust for privacy and confidentiality in distributed transactions” describes a bilateral symmetric approach to authorization, privacy protection and obligation enforcement in distributed transactions. The authors introduce the concept of the obligation of trust (OoT) protocol as a privacy assurance and authorization mechanism. They also demonstrate how the OoT protocol can be used in a number of different scenarios to improve upon the mechanisms that are currently available today. Applicability of integrating the proposed protocol into distributed authorization systems for stricter privacy and confidentiality control is also addressed. This paper adds to current research in trust negotiation, privacy protection and authorization by combining all three together into one set of standardized protocols.

Yuan-Chu Hwang and Soe-Tsyr Yuan in their paper entitled “Ubiquitous proximity e-service for trust collaboration” advocates the utility of ubiquitous proximity e-service (UPS) that could be realized in our daily e-commerce environment and enables information diffusion effectively. They propose the notion of ubiquitous proximity e-service for exploring collective wisdom in the ubiquitous environment. The UPS highlights the collective effort focused on collecting the user group’s power as the reference for ubiquitous trust decisions. A significant value of the proposed approach lies in the increased possibility of establishing innovative social network relationships. It gives people better chances to make interpersonal connections. By combining those interpersonal tie relationships, ubiquitous proximity e-service can more easily cause information diffusion and effectively encourage collective wisdom.

The paper by Maria Karyda, Stefanos Gritzalis, Jong Hyuk Park and Spyros Kokolakis entitled “Privacy and fair information practices in ubiquitous environments: research challenges and future directions” aims to address the question whether or if, invasive/intrusive usage of ubiquitous technologies can be prevented and explores how privacy protection, in terms of commonly accepted fair information practice principles can be accommodated in these applications. This study contributes to the exploration of ubiquitous computing implications for society and especially implications on individuals’ fundamental rights, such as the right to privacy. It also demonstrates the importance of a multidisciplinary approach and the value of input from related fields. Furthermore, this paper identifies a number of privacy challenges that should be overcome before ubiquitous applications become reality. These challenges are based on the analysis of research in progress and the analysis of fundamental practices for privacy protection.

Geon Woo Kim, Deok Gyu Lee and Jong Wook Han in their paper entitled “Security technologies based on home gateway for making smart home secure” propose an integrated security system to guarantee reliability, availability and security based on secure home gateway. The authors identify variety of authentication and authorization technologies that are essential to make home network system secure and describe corresponding security mechanisms specialized for different home networks. The findings of security mechanism in this paper suggest that security policy for home network needs to be specified with a specialized way rather than general method. As the problem of home network security has been arousing attention, this paper introduces an integrated security model and emphasizes safety and convenience as to promote reliability on home network services, which shows a significant value of this paper.

The paper by Sajid Hussain, Firdous Kausar, Ashraf Masood and Jong Hyuk Park entitled “An efficient collusion resistant security mechanism for heterogeneous sensor networks” addresses the anti-collusion problem in heterogeneous sensor networks (HSN). They propose a novel key distribution scheme for heterogeneous sensor networks that have better system performance and security solutions for scalable applications in dynamic and ubiquitous environments. The main contribution of this study is that the proposed key management scheme outperforms previous random key pre-distribution schemes in terms of the storage requirement. It is also shown that the proposed scheme provides better resilience against node capture and collusion attack.

Rodrigo Roman and Javier Lopez in their paper entitled “Integrating wireless sensor networks and the internet: a security analysis” study the interactions between sensor networks and the internet from the point-of-view of security. The authors discuss the security issues that arise when integrating wireless sensor networks (WSN) and the internet. They also review whether existing technology mechanisms are suitable and can be applied to this context. This paper identifies both solutions and research challenges by considering all the possible approaches that can be used to connect a WSN with the internet, and analyze the security of their interactions.

All of the above papers address either security issues in ubiquitous and intelligent computing systems or propose novel application models in the various IUC fields. They also trigger further related research and technology improvements in application and security services of IUC. Honorably, this special issue serves as a landmark source for education, information, and reference to professors, researchers and graduate students interested in updating their knowledge about or active in security and novel application models for intelligent and ubiquitous computing systems.

The guest editors would like to express sincere gratitude to Dr David G. Schwartz (Internet Research EIC), for giving us the opportunity to prepare this special issue. In addition, we are deeply indebted to numerous reviewers for their professional effort, insight and hard work put into commenting on the selected articles that reflect the essence of this special issue. Last but not least, we are grateful to all authors for their contributions and for undertaking two-cycle revision of their manuscripts, without which this special section could not have been produced.

Jong Hyuk ParkKyungam University, South KoreaStefanos GritzalisUniversity of the AegeanChing-Hsien HsuGreeceChung Hua University, Taiwan