A secure framework and related protocols for ubiquitous access to electronic health records using Java sim cards

Ubiquitous access to patient medical records is an important aspect of caring for patient safety. Unavailability of sufficient medical information at the point-ofcare could possibly lead to a fatality. The U.S. Institute of Medicine has reported that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die each year due to medical errors, such as incorrect medication dosages, due to poor legibility in manual records, or delays in consolidating needed information to discern the proper intervention. In this research we propose employing emergent technologies such as Java SIM Cards (JSC), Smart Phones (SP), Next Generation Networks (NGN), Near Field Communications (NFC), Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and Biometric Identification to develop a secure framework and related protocols for ubiquitous access to Electronic Health Records (EHR). A partial EHR contained within a JSC can be used at the point-of-care in order to help quick diagnosis of a patient’s problems. The full EHR can be accessed from an Electronic Health Records Centre (EHRC) when time and network availability permit. Moreover, this framework and related protocols enable patients to give their explicit consent to a doctor to access their personal medical data, by using their Smart Phone, when the doctor needs to see or update the patient’s medical information during an examination. Also our proposed solution would give the power to patients to modify the Access Control List (ACL) related to their EHRs and view their EHRs through their Smart Phone. Currently, very limited research has been done on using JSCs and similar technologies as a portable repository of EHRs or on the specific security issues that are likely to arise when JSCs are used with ubiquitous access to EHRs. Previous research is concerned with using Medicare cards, a kind of Smart Card, as a repository of medical information at the patient point-of-care. However, this imposes some limitations on the patient’s emergency medical care, including the inability to detect the patient’s location, to call and send information to an emergency room automatically, and to interact with the patient in order to get consent. The aim of our framework and related protocols is to overcome these limitations by taking advantage of the SIM card and the technologies mentioned above. Briefly, our framework and related protocols will offer the full benefits of accessing an up-to-date, precise, and comprehensive medical history of a patient, whilst its mobility will provide ubiquitous access to medical and patient information everywhere it is needed. The objective of our framework and related protocols is to automate interactions between patients, healthcare providers and insurance organisations, increase patient safety, improve quality of care, and reduce the costs.

A secure framework and related protocols for ubiquitous access to electronic health records using Java SIM cards

Ubiquitous access to patient medical records is an important aspect of caring for patient safety. Unavailability of sufficient medical information at the patient point-of-care could possibly lead to a fatality. In this paper we propose employing emergent technologies such as Java SIM Cards (JSC),Smart Phones (SP), Next Generation Networks (NGN), Near Field Communications (NFC), Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and Biometric Identification to develop a secure framework and related protocols for ubiquitous access to Electronic Health Records (EHRs). A partial EHR contained within a JSC can be used at the patient point-of-care in order to help quick diagnosis of a patient’s problems. The full EHR can be accessed from an Electronic Healthcare Records Centre (EHRC).

Secure tracking for critical applications : communications, GPS and future Galileo services

Tracking/remote monitoring systems using GNSS are a proven method to enhance the safety and security of personnel and vehicles carrying precious or hazardous cargo. While GNSS tracking appears to mitigate some of these threats, if not adequately secured, it can be a double-edged sword allowing adversaries to obtain sensitive shipment and vehicle position data to better coordinate their attacks, and to provide a false sense of security to monitoring centers. Tracking systems must be designed with the ability to perform route-compliance and thwart attacks ranging from low-level attacks such as the cutting of antenna cables to medium and high-level attacks involving radio jamming and signal / data-level simulation, especially where the goods transported have a potentially high value to terrorists. This paper discusses the use of GNSS in critical tracking applications, addressing the mitigation of GNSS security issues, augmentation systems and communication systems in order to provide highly robust and survivable tracking systems.

Secure tracking using trusted GNSS receivers and Galileo authentication services

This paper describes a secure framework for tracking applications that use the Galileo signal authentication services. First a number of limitations that affect the trust of critical tracking applications, even in presence of authenticated GNSS signals, are detailed. Requirements for secure tracking are then introduced; detailing how the integrity characteristics of the Galileo authentication could enhance the security of active tracking applications. This paper concludes with a discussion of our existing tracking technology using a Siemens TC45 GSM/GPRS module and future development utilizing our previously proposed trusted GNSS receiver.

Semi-supervised intelligent surveillance system for secure environments

This paper proposes a semi-supervised intelligent visual surveillance system to exploit the information from multi-camera networks for the monitoring of people and vehicles. Modules are proposed to perform critical surveillance tasks including: the management and calibration of cameras within a multi-camera network; tracking of objects across multiple views; recognition of people utilising biometrics and in particular soft-biometrics; the monitoring of crowds; and activity recognition. Recent advances in these computer vision modules and capability gaps in surveillance technology are also highlighted.

X.509v3 Certificates for Secure Shell authentication

X.509 public key certificates use a signature by a trusted certification authority to bind a given public key to a given digital identity. This document specifies how to use X.509 version 3 public key certificates in public key algorithms in the Secure Shell protocol.

Secure data aggregation in wireless sensor networks

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a set of sensors that are integrated with a physical environment. These sensors are small in size, and capable of sensing physical phenomena and processing them. They communicate in a multihop manner, due to a short radio range, to form an Ad Hoc network capable of reporting network activities to a data collection sink. Recent advances in WSNs have led to several new promising applications, including habitat monitoring, military target tracking, natural disaster relief, and health monitoring. The current version of sensor node, such as MICA2, uses a 16 bit, 8 MHz Texas Instruments MSP430 micro-controller with only 10 KB RAM, 128 KB program space, 512 KB external ash memory to store measurement data, and is powered by two AA batteries. Due to these unique specifications and a lack of tamper-resistant hardware, devising security protocols for WSNs is complex. Previous studies show that data transmission consumes much more energy than computation. Data aggregation can greatly help to reduce this consumption by eliminating redundant data. However, aggregators are under the threat of various types of attacks. Among them, node compromise is usually considered as one of the most challenging for the security of WSNs. In a node compromise attack, an adversary physically tampers with a node in order to extract the cryptographic secrets. This attack can be very harmful depending on the security architecture of the network. For example, when an aggregator node is compromised, it is easy for the adversary to change the aggregation result and inject false data into the WSN. The contributions of this thesis to the area of secure data aggregation are manifold. We firstly define the security for data aggregation in WSNs. In contrast with existing secure data aggregation definitions, the proposed definition covers the unique characteristics that WSNs have. Secondly, we analyze the relationship between security services and adversarial models considered in existing secure data aggregation in order to provide a general framework of required security services. Thirdly, we analyze existing cryptographic-based and reputationbased secure data aggregation schemes. This analysis covers security services provided by these schemes and their robustness against attacks. Fourthly, we propose a robust reputationbased secure data aggregation scheme for WSNs. This scheme minimizes the use of heavy cryptographic mechanisms. The security advantages provided by this scheme are realized by integrating aggregation functionalities with: (i) a reputation system, (ii) an estimation theory, and (iii) a change detection mechanism. We have shown that this addition helps defend against most of the security attacks discussed in this thesis, including the On-Off attack. Finally, we propose a secure key management scheme in order to distribute essential pairwise and group keys among the sensor nodes. The design idea of the proposed scheme is the combination between Lamport's reverse hash chain as well as the usual hash chain to provide both past and future key secrecy. The proposal avoids the delivery of the whole value of a new group key for group key update; instead only the half of the value is transmitted from the network manager to the sensor nodes. This way, the compromise of a pairwise key alone does not lead to the compromise of the group key. The new pairwise key in our scheme is determined by Diffie-Hellman based key agreement.

Tensions in developing a secure collective information practice : the case of Agile Ridesharing

Many current HCI, social networking, ubiquitous computing, and context aware designs, in order for the design to function, have access to, or collect, significant personal information about the user. This raises concerns about privacy and security, in both the research community and main-stream media. From a practical perspective, in the social world, secrecy and security form an ongoing accomplishment rather than something that is set up and left alone. We explore how design can support privacy as practical action, and investigate the notion of collective information-practice of privacy and security concerns of participants of a mobile, social software for ride sharing. This paper contributes an understanding of HCI security and privacy tensions, discovered while “designing in use” using a Reflective, Agile, Iterative Design (RAID) method.

Towards a provably secure DoS-Resilient key exchange protocol with perfect forward secrecy

Just Fast Keying (JFK) is a simple, efficient and secure key exchange protocol proposed by Aiello et al. (ACM TISSEC, 2004). JFK is well known for its novel design features, notably its resistance to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Using Meadows’ cost-based framework, we identify a new DoS vulnerability in JFK. The JFK protocol is claimed secure in the Canetti-Krawczyk model under the Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) assumption. We show that security of the JFK protocol, when reusing ephemeral Diffie-Hellman keys, appears to require the Gap Diffie-Hellman (GDH) assumption in the random oracle model. We propose a new variant of JFK that avoids the identified DoS vulnerability and provides perfect forward secrecy even under the DDH assumption, achieving the full security promised by the JFK protocol.

Efficient and secure self-escrowed public-key infrastructures

A self-escrowed public key infrastructure (SE-PKI) combines the usual functionality of a public-key infrastructure with the ability to recover private keys given some trap-door information. We present an additively homomorphic variant of an existing SE-PKI for ElGamal encryption. We also propose a new efficient SE-PKI based on the ElGamal and Okamoto-Uchiyama cryptosystems that is more efficient than the previous SE-PKI. This is the first SE-PKI that does not suffer from a key doubling problem of previous SE-PKI proposals. Additionally, we present the first self-escrowed encryption schemes secure against chosen-ciphertext attack in the standard model. These schemes are also quite efficient and are based on the Cramer-Shoup cryptosystem, and the Kurosawa-Desmedt hybrid variant in different groups.

Antecedents of sustainable management support for IT related initiatives

Having IT-related capabilities is not enough to secure value from IT resources and survive in today’s competitive environment. IT resources evolve dynamically and firms must sustain their existing capabilities to continue to leverage value from their IT resources. Firm’s human resources are an important IT-related capability, and an important source of their competitive advantage. Using a field survey, this study demonstrates that a dynamic end-user environment, a result of a coordinated change in complementary factors can help sustain firms’ IT-related management capabilities. These factors include an appropriate organizational design to decision rights and work environment and a congruent reward system. This study adds an important dimension in understanding why some firms continue to perform better with their IT resources than others. For practice, this study suggests that a comprehensive approach to what constitutes valuable organizational resources is necessary.

Secure authentication procedure with mobile device for ubiquitous health environments

Medical industries have brought Information Technology (IT) in their systems for both patients and medical staffs due to the numerous benefits of IT we experience at presently. Moreover, the Mobile healthcare (M-health) system has been developed as the first step of Ubiquitous Health Environment (UHE). With the mobility and multi-functions, M-health system will be able to provide more efficient and various services for both doctors and patients. Due to the invisible feature of mobile signals, hackers have easier access to hospital networks than wired network systems. This may result in several security incidents unless security protocols are well implemented. In this paper, user authentication and authorization procedures will applied as a featured component at each level of M-health systems inthe hospital environment. Accordingly, M-health system in the hospital will meet the optimal requirements as a countermeasure to its vulnerabilities.

A secure telehealth system for ubiquitous health environment

U-Healthcare means that it provides healthcare services "at anytime and anywhere" using wired, wireless and ubiquitous sensor network technologies. As a main field of U-healthcare, Telehealth has been developed as an enhancement of Telemedicine. This system includes two-way interactive web-video communications, sensor technology, and health informatics. With these components, it will assist patients to receive their first initial diagnosis. Futhermore, Telehealth will help doctors diagnose patient's diseases at early stages and recommend treatments to patients. However, this system has a few limitations such as privacy issues, interruption of real-time service and a wrong ordering from remote diagnosis. To deal with those flaws, security procedures such as authorised access should be applied to as an indispensible component in medical environment. As a consequence, Telehealth system with these protection procedures in clinical services will cope with anticipated vulnerabilities of U-Healthcare services and security issues involved.