Abstract
More powerful smart devices come onto the market and into the hands of consumers every year. These devices provide less reliance on fixed mediums for information and content sharing by supporting peer-to-peer connections such as Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth and Near Field Communication. Technologies such as these enable resource sharing that is not hindered by fixed access point range or costly Internet connections. This new-found mobility has enabled a greater degree of freedom for smart device users to share and consume resources wherever they are. New technologies not only support unrestricted content sharing, but also introduce new threats to the security of personal and corporate information resident on smart devices.
Peer-to-peer technologies do not provide a means to enable streamlined sharing for multiple files. It quickly becomes a cumbersome task to synchronise content such as files or calendars without a third-party application such as DropBox or iCloud, which may incur additional costs to the user. To combat this limitation, smart spaces can enable the sharing of resources on-the-go, whenever other capable devices are in range.
Smart spaces provide a managed means for users to share and protect their resources. Although current smart spaces can manage user resources in a secure way, they lack the ability to allow users to define content sharing preferences and have them considered when access control is performed. Current smart spaces thus provide a greater degree of autonomy and security, but they do not support the measure of personalisation and control needed by today’s smart device users.
In order to address the contents sharing and personalisation concerns relating to smart spaces, this dissertation proposes the concept of a Local Personal Smart space to provide user-tailored services to smart devices in close proximity. This research proposes a Local Personal Smart Space framework that is geared to provide secure resource sharing by supporting resources and access control policy management to perform access control locally on a peer device without the reliance on third parties. This dissertation defines a trust- and context-based access control model capable of catering to user preferences and the security of groups of devices and files through the use of local and global policies which are combined to consider the personal preference of the device owner and the security rules set by the group owner.
To test the Local Personal Smart Space framework and its access control model, this research developed the SmartNet prototype to verify their effectiveness at providing user-tailored services and security for content resident on the devices. The SmartNet application also serves to verify the effectiveness of this research in achieving its research objectives.
M.Sc. (Information Technology)