Section:
Overall Objectives
Introduction
The research work within the project-team is devoted to the design
and analysis of core database techniques dedicated to the definition
of secured and mobile information systems.
Ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence entail embedding data
in increasingly light and specialized devices (chips, sensors and
electronic appliances for smart buildings, telephony, transportation,
health, etc.). These devices exhibit severe hardware constraints to
match size, security, power consumption and also production costs
requirements. At the same time, they could highly benefit from embedded
database functionalities to store data, analyze it, query it and protect
it. This raises a first question “: How to make
powerful data management techniques compatible with highly constrained
hardware platforms?”. To tackle this question, SMIS contributes
to the design and validation of new storage and indexing models, query
execution and optimization techniques, and transaction protocols.
The relevance of this research goes beyond embedded databases and
may have potential applications for database servers running on advanced
hardware.
By making information more accessible and by multiplying –often transparently–
the means of acquiring it, ubiquitous computing involves new threats
for data privacy. The second question addressed by the project-team
is then “: How to make smart objects less intrusive?”.
New access and usage control models have to be devised to help individuals
keep a better control on the acquisition and sharing conditions of
their data. This means integrating privacy principles like user’s
consent, limited collection and limited retention in the access and
usage control policy definition. This also means designing appropriate
mechanisms to enforce this control and provide accountability with
strong security guarantees.
In parallel, thanks to a high degree of decentralization and to the
emergence of low cost tamper-resistant hardware, ubiquitous computing
contains the seeds for new ways of managing personal/sensitive data.
The third question driving the research of the project-team is therefore
“: How to build privacy-by-design architectures
based on trusted smart objects?”. The objective is to capitalize
on embedded data management techniques, privacy-preserving mechanisms,
trusted devices and cryptographic protocols to define an integrated
framework dedicated to the secure management of personal/sensitive
data. The expectation is showing that credible alternatives to a systematic
centralization of personal/sensitive data on servers can be devised
and validating the approach through real case experiments.
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