modular context-aware access control for medical sensor networks
Medical sensor networks allow for pervasive health monitoring of users in hospitals, at home, or on the way. The privacy and confidentiality of medical data need to be guaranteed at any moment to make sure that unauthorized parties cannot retrieve confidential information. This is a great challenge due to two main reasons. First, wireless sensors are resource-constrained devices that limit the applicability of traditional solutions. Second, the access control system must be context-aware and adapt its security settings to ensure the users' safety during, e.g., medical emergencies. To solve these issues, this paper presents a modular context-aware access control system tailored to pervasive medical sensor networks in which the access control decisions and the response delay depend upon the health acuteness of a user. Our system extends traditional role-based access control systems by allowing for context-awareness in critical, emergency, and normal access control situations. We further present a lightweight encoding for our modular access control policies as well as an access control engine efficiently running on resource-constrained sensor nodes. Finally, we analyze how the proposed access control system suits existing security architectures for medical sensor networks.
access control medical sensor network security