Call for Papers: International Workshop on Adaptive Security &
Privacy Management for the Internet of Things (ASPI 2013)

Time and Location: September 8th (Sunday) 2013, Zurich, Switzerland


Co-located at the 15th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing
(UbiComp2013, http://www.ubicomp.org/ubicomp2013/)

Workshop Description

The Internet of Things (IoT) denotes the interconnection of highly heterogeneous networked entities and networks following a number of communication patterns such as: human-to-human (H2H), human-to-thing (H2T), thing-to-thing (T2T), or thing-to-things (T2Ts). Nowadays, the IoT presents a strong focus of research with various initiatives working on the (re)design, application, and use of existing and new Internet technology for the IoT. Several significant challenges should be addressed to fulfil the IoT vision, including security and privacy. The Internet is already under continuous threats and the addition of many additional types of devices and interaction will open new security breaches so as to spark new malicious actions. Security and privacy management for the IoT remains a core challenge.

Many IoT devices may have zero or minimal security by design because they are low resource, low power devices, designed to work as closed vertical services. Security threats and risks may be higher because devices are unattended, use local wireless communication that have no or weak encryption making them more susceptible to eavesdropping and because users find security too unusable to setup and operate and hence leave devices relatively unsecure. It may be easier to reproduce and fake data sources, access nodes and data sinks that interact with IoT devices in order to attack devices or the services they access. Devices can be moved between or removed from private, communal, public and hostile physical spaces with differing levels of infrastructural security and privacy. There is a higher risk of a loss of privacy for human users and organisations because of an increased ability to eavesdrop, because of wireless networks with soft boundaries, and because embedded environment devices can sense smaller amounts of physical trails with a greater degree of sensitivity and accuracy. A specific focus is on the need for IoT security and privacy to adapt to changing contexts. The adaptation has multiple dimensions. We can adapt existing conventional security models to more effectively secure an IoT. We can adapt security pre-planned and unplanned context changes such as different moving around in different physical spaces. IoT systems can be designed to self-adapt. IoT systems can adapt to the active (re) configuration and maintenance of IoT devices and systems of devices by users and by artificial agents.

The proposed workshop intends to bring together researchers and practitioners from relevant fields to present and disseminate ongoing research for vision for the security and privacy models, protocols, algorithms, context-awareness for security, and devices that can be implemented in the Internet of Things and to relate these to ubiquitous computing. It aims to facilitate knowledge transfer and synergy, bridge gaps between the IoT and UbiComp research communities and related groups for mutual benefit, to help identify opportunities and challenges for interested researchers, system developers and innovators.

It will cover topics at both theoretical and applied aspects in this multi-disciplinary research area. The workshop will be organised in a proactive and encompassing format, i.e., containing a mixture of invited talks, oral presentations and an open panel discussion. The organisers fully believe that the themes of the workshop will have a significant impact to develop secure ubiquitous computing services based on the Internet of Things, and have the determination to organise the same workshop in the coming years. Through the workshop it is expected that a core research community in this area can be formed that nurtures relevant research and facilitates dissemination of results and will feed these into UbiComp. The workshop will include a programme committee consisting of high profile researchers in relevant research areas and a specific plan to promote it. In addition to publication in ACM digital library, selected accepted papers will be published in an international Journal and potentially a book - refer to the publication section below.