The mixed blessing of ubiquitous computing
By Basheera Khan
It's official; the IT systems of tomorrow will grow upon the bedrock of technological development we know as ubiquitous computing. In the blue sky visions of computer scientists and researchers across
the world, it is the classic sci-fi vision made real, of the invisible computer which is as much part of the environment of Man as the table he sits at, the roads he traverses and the information he
consumes.
We're talking about computing that encompasses almost every area and stage of human life, computing that takes the computer out of the office or the study, and integrates it into all aspects of human
communication and interaction.
The vision is that of a multitude of 'smart' objects, with the awareness of context, situation and location, with the ability to interact autonomously, both reactively and proactively, and to cooperate and
communicate with every other object.
For example, your 'smart' dustbin, having scanned the barcode on the bottle of milk you've just thrown out, checks with the fridge and the grocery cupboard to make sure there isn't any more milk
lurking about.
Having satisfied itself of the fact that there is no milk in the house, the dustbin relays a request to the housekeeping application that manages the smooth running of your house, which in turns adds milk
to the digital shopping list it sends to the local grocery store on a daily basis, where items are made ready for you to pick up on your way home.
The shop's inventory management system realizes it's out of the semi-skimmed variety you normally buy, polls its neighbours for alternatives, and then sends back a message (which the fridge relays to
you as you leave work) saying that if it's semi-skimmed milk you want, you'll have to go three blocks out of your way - or pick up some full cream milk on your normal route home instead. And so it goes,
with seemingly limitless opportunities for implementation.
That scenario is a flight of futuristic fancy at the moment - but thanks to the numerous organisations and partnerships investing in research and development on the subject, the vision of ubiquitous
computing is very rapidly becoming reality.
Bushwhacking her way through the jungle of security issues the topic raises, is Prof. Dr. Claudia Eckert. A professor in computer science at the Technical University in Darmstadt, Germany, where she
holds the chair for IT Security, Prof. Dr. Eckert is also the director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Telecooperation (SIT), part of a greater organisation, the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, a non-profit
organization with an annual research budget of more than 801bn, which it uses to undertake applied and basic research of interest to private and public enterprise, and of wide benefit to society as a
whole.
SIT focuses on applied research in the field of security technology its mission is threefold; to create reliable and intuitively usable individual solutions for its partners in the public and private sector; to
protect the integration and interworking of various technologies through solid IT security, and looking to the future, to use security technology to enable new applications.
With more than 10 years of R&D background in IT security, operating systems, distributed systems and networking, Prof. Dr. Eckert now focuses specifically on ubiquitous computing, or ubiquom, as it's
known in the halls of SIT.
To fully understand the implications of ubiquom, one must first get to grips with the evolving nature of IT systems. Where once enterprises built their IT infrastructure in closed networks, they soon
appreciated the increased opportunities for productivity in open, interconnected systems, says Prof. Dr. Eckert.
Companies began allowing employees more flexible access to information, using technologies like virtual private networks to keep things secure.
That led, almost inevitably, to where we find ourselves today; living and working in an interconnected, mobile world - communicating anytime, anywhere, with anyone, across a number of devices that
have become pivotal to the idea of the mobile office.
All of this connectivity comes with its own baggage of security issues. First and foremost, companies need to ensure authenticity - proof that the users, devices and services involved are all who or what
they say they are.
Although it sounds fairly simple, in practice, there is almost always a weakness in the chain that can be exploited by ne'er-do-wells - how many scam mails phishing for bank account details have you
received in the last three months?
Other security issues to be addressed include confidentiality - that only those authorised can retrieve sensitive information; integrity - barring unauthorised data manipulation; accountability - allowing for
non-repudiation; and lastly, an issue close to home for us all; privacy - where service providers, be they corporate or government-related, ensure that there is no unauthorized profiling of their customers,
nor any tracing of customers' actions.
There are a number of well-known and much-used security mechanisms in place to prevent these issues from taking root and toppling the IT infrastructure that has grown up around our ears when we
weren't looking.
That said, there remain numerous unsolved security problems, and those are on the increase as the usage of ICT mushrooms. Prof. Dr. Eckert believes that as it stands, we have not truly mastered
technology security; what mechanisms there exist may be suitable by and large, but they are complicated to use and error-prone.
And as computing becomes pervasive, as more diverse devices and networks are added to the mix, all needing to talk with every other device and network, this will only increase the complexity of
securing and managing the dependencies that arise out of such intensive interaction - especially where the stability and performance of critical infrastructures is concerned.
Imagine, for example, that each smoke detector in every house had the ability to call home to an emergency services operations centre, creating an early warning system that could potentially save
thousands of lives every year - and then imagine what would happen if that service was compromised in any way. When it comes to widespread implementation of ubiquitous computing, there can be
more at stake than just shareholder profits.
There are other areas in which ubiquom is seen as being able to have an impact and be useful as well, says Prof. Dr. Eckert. For example, this will be the case for different kinds of logistic processes
(transportation, aircraft etc.) to be able to track objects (like keeping track of free beds in hospitals). The area of healthcare is another important field for this technology, she says.
Another usage is in the field of RFID technology, the next big IT investment for larger organisations with thousands of individual objects to track. And although it isn't itself ubiquom, Prof. Dr. Eckert
believes best practice in building up identity and access management can be considered an invaluable stepping stone to ubiquom, and has the immediate benefit of reducing administrative overhead
expenses.
Her final words on the topic are tempered with realism. "On the other hand, I am not really convinced that ubiquom should be phased into everyday life, because I see a lot of still unsolved problems
concerning especially privacy issues.
"In addition, as we will become more and more dependent on technical infrastructures, damages to these infrastructures by virus attacks, denial of service attacks, etc. will have catastrophic
consequences. As we do not master our IT infrastructures we are already using today, I hesitate to hope that we will master the ever increasing infrastructures coming up with ubiquitous computing.
"That is why I think that computer scientists must now work together with politicians, etc. to reveal the problems popping up, to make people aware of where we are going and to encourage new
research programs that investigate not only the questions of how to build such technologies, but also how to cope with the potential unwanted consequences."
About the Author
Basheera Khan is a freelance technology journalist. Feedback may be directed via editor@itwales.com.
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