Privacy-aware IoT cloud survivability for future connected home ecosystem

Abstract

Cloud services can greatly enhance the capabilities of mobile and smart devices, particularly within the ecosystem of connected home futures. A single device now performs multiple functions: organizing contacts and calendars, playing games, storing sensitive personal and corporate information, and even making phone calls. Mobile devices are currently, largely single-user systems. Despite the fact that a device can be used for various purposes, the dividing line between data and applications applied in differing domains is poorly defined. Extending such complexities to the cloud raises a host of issues relating to data ownership, cloud-centric security modules, data/device centric mobile security solutions, and cloud-centric data management. Device survivability, remote device management, and contextual policy enforcement capabilities can be supported and extended by cloud services. In this paper, our contribution is threefold: firstly, we examine the issues related to mobile/smart devices and cloud services, and present a context-based, dynamic cloud security framework appropriate for connected home ecosystem futures. Secondly, we outline the key requirements for a cloud infrastructure. We outline mechanisms to handle device survivability and continuity in terms of remote back-up, remote wipe and dynamic context-aware cloud-centric smart device solutions. Thirdly, the paper also summarised some of the security threats and presents a design for a dynamic secure cloud resilience framework. The framework supports the issues of continuity, resilience and survivability of data on smart devices.