Requirements and Challenges in the Design of Privacy-aware Sensor Networks.
Efthimia Aivaloglou, Stefanos Gritzalis, Charalabos A. Skianis · 2006
Sensor networks are set to become a truly ubiqui- tous technology that will affect the lives of the people in their application environment. While providing the opportunity for sophisticated, context-aware services, at the same time sensor networks impose great privacy risks. This paper discusses privacy issues in sensor networks, by identifying the requirements for privacy preserving deployments, analysing the challenges faced when designing them, and discussing the main solutions that have been proposed. I. INTRODUCTION In the forthcoming era of ubiquitous computing, mobile ad hoc networking technologies and sensor networks as a specialisation of these, are expected to play an essential role. Large scale sensor networks, promising to offer increased data collection capabilities through the use of small sensing devices, are not only envisioned to be globally deployed for commercial, scientific or military purposes, but also to be integrated into our daily lives, providing context rich information for highly sophisticated services. The use of sensor network applications, utilising numer- ous almost invisible sensors that constantly monitor their environment, collect, process and communicate a variety of information, inevitably causes concerns related to their po- tential of abuse and the risks they impose to the privacy of individuals. The potential risks are aggravated by the fact that different types of sensor networks may be deployed for dif- ferent purposes, others being trusted, for example subscription based sensor networks offering health services, others being partially trusted, like those deployed for customer assistance in shopping malls, and others untrusted, like surveillance networks the users might be completely unaware of. Even sensor networks initially deployed for legitimate purposes may be abused or violated. Historically, it is believed that as surveillance technology has become cheaper and more effective, it has been increasingly used for privacy abuses (1). The application domain of sensor networks affects both the sensitivity of the information collected and the possibility of attackers to induce information other than the data monitored. In order to preserve privacy, it primarily has to be ensured that sensed information is confined to the sensor network and is accessible only to authorized parties. However, the infrastructureless nature of sensor networks, the computational capability limitations of sensor nodes, and the fact that in- network data aggregation operations are performed, are only some of the challenges faced. Moreover, an issue that must be taken into consideration during the design of realistic security mechanisms is that security services do not provide core network functionality, and, being supportive services, should impose reasonable computational overhead. This paper is outlined as follows: In Section II the privacy requirements in sensor networks are identified. Section III outlines the main challenges confronted and the constraints applying on the design of security solutions. The solutions that have been proposed and correspond to each of the requirements set are then discussed in Section IV. The paper concludes with some remarks in Section V. II. PRIVACY REQUIREMENTS