Secure and Resilient Cloud Services for Enhanced Living Environments

Abstract

It is critical to provide enhanced living environments (ELEs) to people with special needs (such as the elderly and individuals with disabilities) that offer 24/7 continuous monitoring and control of the environment and access to care services when needed. Recently, there has been a strong interest in building ELEs using implantable and wearable sensors, and wireless sensor networks that are supported by cloud computing. However, ELE technologies and information are vulnerable to cyberattacks and exploitations that can lead to life-threatening scenarios such as incorrect medical diagnoses. This article presents a platform that offers secure and resilient services for ELEs. The main components of the platform are the ELE end nodes, secure gateway, and a secure and resilient cloud computing system. End nodes collect ELE variables and human body signals that are stored securely in the cloud using a secure gateway. The secure gateway manages communication between the end nodes and the cloud services using biocyber metrics for authentication. In addition, the cloud architecture provides the required ELE services at any time and from anywhere in a resilient manner.