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VISION of RESEARCH
The convergence of three distinct technical strands: the emergence and deployment of wireless communication infrastructure, the proliferation of mobile
computing devices, and the population boom of embedded system, have been making a profound shift in the way we live and work, offering the promise of
bringing us close to the holy grail of information technology ?ubiquitous computing, at any place and any time!
Agent-based architecture has been identified as a favorite structure; in which a software agent built with business logic is used as a smart intermediary
between a device that provides/consumes some services and its service consumer/provider. As this profound technology creates such an environment
that is saturated with computing and communication capability, yet gracefully integrated with human users[1], we intuitively learn that the
agent-based architecture is sort of reflection of human society in cyber space. This implicitly provides us with a natural philosophy to address the
security issues in ubiquitous computing: honestly “encode?the traditional existing organizational security concept and business logic of human society
into the agent-based computing environment. Trying to hide complexity of security by burying security mechanisms at low level of communication
infrastructure would fail to address the security issues in ubiquitous computing, because:
- Physically separated systems federate into heterogeneous networks of unlimited scale, so there
can be no central authority, no homogeneous security policy, and no ubiquitous security infrastructure
for security enforcement or guarantee.
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Ubiquitous computing creates such an environment saturated with computing and communication capability, yet gracefully integrated with human
users [1], so the demands of electronic security mechanism must be more user-centered diversely, which cannot rely or be controlled by
network/infrastructure operators.
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End-to-end security driven by digitizing activities of ordinary users must be addressed in such a way which is conceptually coincide with existing
business logic and social ethic, yet needs minimum involvement of human being.
As a quest for security in ubiquitous computing, our research thrusts include exploring the possible formation and structure of agent-based ubiquitous
computing; analyzing and implementing its security implications with basic cryptographic functions; and establishing a logic set, so that conceptually and
technically layout a security foundation for the research and development of applications of ubiquitous computing.
[1] It was said by Mark Weiser at the beginning of his seminal paper about his vision of ubiquitous computing that "the most profound technologies are those
that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it."
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