Final Report Summary - ASAP (Adaptive Security and Privacy)
With the prevalence of mobile computing devices such as smart phones and wearable devices, and the increasing availability of pervasive services through infrastructures such as Clouds, ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) is now a reality for many people. This reality is generating opportunities for people to interact socially in new and richer ways, and to work more effectively in a variety of new environments. More generally, Ubicomp infrastructures – controlled by software – are set to determine users’ access to critical services, such as water and power.
With these opportunities come higher risks of misuse of technology by legitimate users or malicious agents. Therefore, the role and design of software for managing use and protecting against misuse are increasingly critical, and the engineering of software that is both functionally effective while safe guarding user assets from harm is a key challenge. Following on from this challenge, the very nature of Ubicomp means that software must adapt to the changing needs of users and their environment, and, more critically, to the different threats to users’ security and privacy.
The ASAP research programme has successfully developed adaptive software engineering techniques that are cognisant of the changing functional needs of users, of the changing threats to user assets, and of the changing relationships between them. It has delivered adaptive software capabilities for supporting users in managing their privacy requirements, and adaptive software capabilities to deliver secure software that underpin those requirements. It has also developed techniques that allow proactive evidence collection from systems, in order to perform more effective forensic analysis of such systems, if and when they fail.
Highlight achievements include an approach to monitor the values of assets, and their location, and to adapt the protection of the assets depending on these values and locations. In the area of adaptive privacy, we developed an approach for adaptive sharing of data that trades off privacy risk with social benefit. We also created a wearable privacy band for providing users with adaptive awareness of and control over their private data. And, finally, in the area of digital forensics, we developed an approach for supporting citizen to send, in a forensically sound way, selected evidence from social media to the police. All these achievements have been recognised through international awards, patents, and of course peer reviewed publications.
Some of the project's highlights and news appear at the project website at: www.asap-project.eu.
With these opportunities come higher risks of misuse of technology by legitimate users or malicious agents. Therefore, the role and design of software for managing use and protecting against misuse are increasingly critical, and the engineering of software that is both functionally effective while safe guarding user assets from harm is a key challenge. Following on from this challenge, the very nature of Ubicomp means that software must adapt to the changing needs of users and their environment, and, more critically, to the different threats to users’ security and privacy.
The ASAP research programme has successfully developed adaptive software engineering techniques that are cognisant of the changing functional needs of users, of the changing threats to user assets, and of the changing relationships between them. It has delivered adaptive software capabilities for supporting users in managing their privacy requirements, and adaptive software capabilities to deliver secure software that underpin those requirements. It has also developed techniques that allow proactive evidence collection from systems, in order to perform more effective forensic analysis of such systems, if and when they fail.
Highlight achievements include an approach to monitor the values of assets, and their location, and to adapt the protection of the assets depending on these values and locations. In the area of adaptive privacy, we developed an approach for adaptive sharing of data that trades off privacy risk with social benefit. We also created a wearable privacy band for providing users with adaptive awareness of and control over their private data. And, finally, in the area of digital forensics, we developed an approach for supporting citizen to send, in a forensically sound way, selected evidence from social media to the police. All these achievements have been recognised through international awards, patents, and of course peer reviewed publications.
Some of the project's highlights and news appear at the project website at: www.asap-project.eu.