Advances in security and multimodality for pervasive computing environments

Abstract

Pervasive computing or ubiquitous computing calls for the deployment of a wide variety of smart devices throughout our working and living spaces. These devices are intended to react to their environment and coordinate with each other and with other network services. This results in a giant, adhoc distributed system, with tens of thousands of people, devices, and services coming and going. Due to the uncertainty and mobility of pervasive computing environments, trust modelling has been regarded as an important problem. Context-awareness, mobility and integration are the properties every pervasive computing environment embodies. Pervasive computing environments (PE) present specific peculiarities with respect to aspects like security and multimodality. While enlarging and easing the ways to access to the environment, security threats arise and the environment must be properly equipped in order to protect itself from malicious attacks and/or from wrong action performed by inexpert users.