›› MIND Lab Seminar Series: 19 September 2007

Context-Aware Security

Gleneesha Johnson
Ph.D. Student in Computer Science, University of Maryland at College Park

›› Logistics

Date: Wednesday, 19 September 2007

Time: 2:00p to 3:00p

Location: AVW 3258

›› Abstract

Traditional security mechanisms are coarse and context insensitive. This is because they are based on relatively stable, well-defined, static contexts, and participants of security arrangements [1]. In the past this was acceptable because computing was typically in a stationary, desktop environment. However, the ever increasing abundance of portable computing devices, combined with the prevalence of wireless networking infrastructure, allows mobile users to access personal information, corporate data, and public resources anytime and anywhere. In such an environment, a user's contextual information (e.g. location, profile) has the ability to change frequently and rapidly. This information can be used by various security mechanisms to allow more informed and appropriate decisions to be made. This presentation will explore some of the ways that context has been incorporated into security, with an emphasis on access control.

[1] R.J. Hulseboch, A.H. Salden, M.S. Bargh, P.W.G Ebben, and J. Reitsma. Context Sensitive Access Control. In ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies, pages 111-119, June 2005