PROPOSAL NUMBER: 0411116 PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Peter Steenkiste INSTITUTION: Carnegie-Mellon University PROPOSAL TITLE: Access Control for Information in Pervasive Computing Environments
Pervasive computing environments collect and use a variety of personal information, such as location and activity information. However, existing access control mechanisms do not apply because of the unique nature of the information: it is often obtained on-demand from sensors, is dynamic, comes in different levels of precision, and is inherently collected in a distributed fashion. This project is developing access control mechanisms that give users control over who can access information about them. Users specify poli-cies at the level of information without having to be concerned about how that informa-tion is derived. The access control mechanisms support several features that are critical in pervasive computing environments, such as the ability to specify and exploit informa-tion relationships, the use of context-sensitive constraints, and support for specifying ser-vice trust. The system will be implemented and evaluated in the context of the Aura per-vasive computing system. While the focus of the project is on pervasive computing envi-ronments, the results should also apply to other environments that handle dynamic, highly distributed information such as sensor networks. Today, privacy concerns make deploy-ment of pervasive computing technology difficult if not impossible - the proposed re-search will make the deployment of pervasive computing applications feasible. Project results will be disseminated through publications, the release of our prototype system, and educational activities such as undergraduate and graduate course projects.
Dr. Brett D. Fleisch Program Director, CISE/CNS June 21, 2004. .
