Context and Location Aware Access Control

Pervasive computing promises to revolutionize computing, empower mobile users, and enhance mobility, customizability and adaptability of computing environments. Intrinsic to the notion of such environments is the capturing of location and context information. Location awareness enables significant functionality for pervasive computing applications, users, resources and the ways they interact. It allows pervasive computing environments to tailor themselves according to users’ preferences and expectations, and reconfigure the available resources in the most efficient way to meet users’ demands and provide seamless interaction.  For example, applications and data can follow users as they roam around, content can be customized based on users’ location, physical surroundings can be customized according to their inhabitants, and security services can be enhanced with accurate location detection.

A hospital environment is an excellent venue for the deployment of location aware computing. Doctors and nurses often need to access a patient’s records from various places within the hospital.  Given HIPPA privacy regulations in the USA for example, some hospitals restrict access to doctors and nurses who are on duty, responsible for providing care for the patient and who are currently on hospital premises.  Currently deployed systems include things like “computers on wheels,” a computing cart that may be rolled from one patient’s room to another, allowing hospital staff to access electronic patient records.  When hospital staff are away from the nurse’s station or computing cart and require patient information, they must find computing services that may be available in places like the hospital library.  

Intrinsic to the notion of pervasive computing environments is the capturing of location and context information. Context awareness and validation enables significant functionality to pervasive computing applications, users, resources and the ways they interact. Much of this functionality depends on validating context information and using it for granting access to data or resources. In this project we propose an encryption and access control framework that uses both context and identity to determine whether an entity or a group of entities may access protected services, data, devices, and other resources. We assume that the resources are context-sensitive, thus requiring the requesting entity to be under a specific context before it is able to access the resource or decrypt the information. Our approach is unique in the way that we decouple context from identity, which adds extra security, facilitates value-added services, and enables efficient key management for group communication.

· Project Team

o     Raquel Hill, Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, Indiana University

o     Jalal Al-Muhtadi, Assistant Professor, Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia

o     Steve Johnson, Professor, Computer Science Department, Indiana University

· Project Status: Bluetooth location sensing prototype

· Project Needs

o     Students interested in pervasive computing, security for mobile devices, formal methods for access control

o     Students with ‘C’ programming experience, experience with programming mobile devices

· Papers

o     J. Al-Muhtadi, R. Hill, R. Campbell, D. Mickunas, Context and Location-Aware Encryption for Pervasive Computing Environments, in the Proceedings of the 4th IEEE Conference on Security in Pervasive Computing,  and Communications, March 2006, Pisa, Italy

o     A. Lee, J. Boyer,  C. Drexelius, P. Naldurg,  R. Hill,  R. Campbell, Supporting Dynamically Changing Authorizations in Pervasive Communication Systems ,  in the proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Security in Pervasive Computing, April 2005, Boppard, Germany

o     J. Al-Muhtadi, R. Hill, R. Campbell, A Privacy Preserving Overlay for Active Spaces, Ubicomp Privacy Workshop in conjunction with the Sixth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Nottingham, England, September 2004.

o     R. Hill, J. Al-Muhtadi, R. Campbell, A. Kapadia, P. Naldurg, A. Ranganathan, A Middleware Architecture for Securing Ubiquitous Computing Cyber Infrastructures, 5th ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Middleware Conference, October 2004,  in IEEE Distributed Systems Online, September 2004.