Ubiquitous computing offers both powerful possibilities and great risks and challenges. Mobile devices entering ubiquitous environments may bring dangers in or face threats already there, so careful control of the interaction between such devices and a ubiquitous environment is required. The Panoply project will provide safe ubiquitous computing environments by using the innovative spheres-of-influence model to dynamically organize related devices into geographical and semantic groups. Spheres of influence offer both a conceptual model for reasoning about group interactions and an organizing principle for an actual implementation. Devices in a sphere share a common security policy and mechanisms that can prevent importation of malicious code or improper use of local resources. Contaminated devices entering a sphere can be rejected, decontaminated or allowed to operate in limited, safe ways. On the reverse side, devices entering a sphere can control what they expose and offer to other devices there, rather than allowing complete access, thereby providing greater privacy and safety for mobile device users. Panoply will use policy negotiation and automated planning capabilities to provide safety in a sphere of influence. The project will build an implementation of the spheres-of-influence model and will demonstrate its safety and effectiveness.
