Systems
 (Spark - Online Refereed Journal)

Security Issues for SHE (Smart Home Environment)
 By Puja Dhar
 

Abstract

Paper reports on the security issues for our Smart Home Environment (SHE). Basically smart home environments are especially building for the people with disabilities and the aging people. Smart home environment can improve their abilities to muddle through daily life activities with the help of technologically advanced home automation systems. This smart house will also be used to get the latest advancements in the filed of home automation and tele care. The aim of SHE is integrating, automating and improving safety & security, communication, comfort and energy saving.

Keywords: SHE, LCD, WiFi, SESAME


Introduction

With the development of new technologies in computers, it has also affected the world of health care. As we know day by day population continues to grow and this also increases the rate of aging people, so we have to make smart homes or intelligent homes that will take care of these elderly and disabled people. This paper focuses on the creation of an environment that acts as an intelligent agent, perceiving the state of the home through sensors and acting upon the environment through device controllers. According to the smart home Association the best definition of smart home technology is the integration of technology and services through home networking. A number of capabilities are needed for our smart home scenario, requiring joint contribution of technologies from machine learning, databases, robotics, mobile computing and multimedia computing. Smart home automates the control of numerous devices within the home. The smart home capabilities must be organized into an architecture that connects these components with each other. The main motive of Smart Homes is that we should consider our homes to be safe and comfortable place to live in. Whenever we talk of intelligent homes every body is having fear of using technologies in their homes, so technology and the home environment should be user friendly our goal should not be just to automate all the jobs in the home but to enable people themselves to address their social, rational, and emotional needs.

\What is Smart Home Environment?

There are many examples through which we can understand what really Smart home Environments are, like if we enter our society complex, the main gate scans the car number and automatically opens to let us in and closes once we are inside. Then we use a smart card to open the front door of our apartment and as soon as we enter, some lights come on and our clock starts telling the exact time we reached home.

One of the examples are like we have to go out of station and as soon as we reach the airport, we realize that we have forgotten to switch off the geyser and some lamps. So what to do? Simple, we send an SMS to our smart home and all the lights and electrical appliances get switched off automatically.

So this is nothing but the applications of the Smart Home Environment. If we are living in a Smart Home Environment, this is not only automated but also secure. The person having smart card only can open the main door of his apartment, but still if any body is successful in the entry, at the same time the owner of the apartment will be alerted through an SMS or even phone call and the same message will be sent to the gatekeeper of the Smart Home. We can always see the picture of a person who is at our door through the LCD display of the Smart home server box.

Structure of Smart homes

In order to create added value, the attention should be paid not only on the used technology but also mainly on the Smart Home Environment so that it will help aged and disabled people. It is very difficult job to create Smart home according to the expectation of the user, so we have to be very cautious which involve very complex process. 

 

Fig1: Pictorial Representation of Smart Homes

Technologies used in Smart Home Environment

For Smart Homes we can say that technologies are the combination of technology and different services provided for better living. Smart home technology is nothing but the collection of electrical devices which are controlled by the powerful controlling devices. To build a smart environment it involves many things like:

Ø      Wi Fi systems

Ø      Different algorithms

Ø      Software Architecture

Ø      Signal predictions

Ø      Image Recognition System

Ø      Motion detection System

Ø      Temperature Controlling System

Ø      Pressure Sensors

Ø      System Networking

Ø      Operating Systems

Nowadays we use small, cheap and faster processors for our smart homes. These technologies use fast memories from terabytes to large communication bandwidths. After the research it is being observed that user interfaces will be replaced by the devices like microcomputers, actuators and sensors. In smart home environment human interaction will be converted into the computer understandable form, human interaction will include speech, emotions and gestures. Actually the network used in smart home environment includes wires for different purposes like for televisions, power supply, telephones, computers and many more appliances.

Companies developing Smart Home devices

For the home to be smart, however, these different devices have to be interoperable. The TEAHA team achieves this interoperability by developing a middleware platform that mediates between different appliances and communication systems. It is based on a software gateway through which information from all the different devices passes, regardless of the network they are using. The platform further provides zero-configuration capability, i.e. appliances are automatically discovered as well as secure communication.

The applications and services that are now possible can do anything from simple automation to surveillance, security, climate control and entertainment.

TRN Reserch News Roundup (December 5, 2005). "Intelligent rooms aim to track movement, recognize gestures and understand spoken commands in order to control lights, project information on the walls and tell you who called while you were out.

Jini Technology from Sun Microsystems provides the necessary facilities for creating network plug and play devices. Which when connected to a network, announce their presence and enable network users to remotely connect to them. Jini provides a set of APIs, protocols and conventions that can handle the common parts of distributed devices.

Smart Home Security

There are many security mechanisms for our Smart Homes. Kerberos was developed at MIT to provide security services but it was having some of the limitations like it was based on symmetric cryptography and it lacks support for access control and delegation.

There is one more security mechanism called “A Secure European System for Applications in a Multi-vendor Environment usually known as SESAME. It was advance than Kerberos with access control privileges for users, which are part of data structure. It also enhances support for delegation. It is based on both symmetric and asymmetric cryptography.

Conclusion 

Digital home technologies can play a key role in helping to meet the challenge of caring for an aging and disable population. The Smart home electronics that will be part of people’s everyday lives for other purposes, such as entertainment and communication, can also be used to deliver health and wellness applications, allowing older adults to age in place and reducing. . The main motive of Smart Homes is that we should consider our homes to be safe and comfortable place to live in. Whenever we talk of intelligent homes every body is having fear of using technologies in their homes, so technology and the home environment should be user friendly our goal should not be just to automate all the jobs in the home but to enable people themselves to address their social, rational, and emotional needs. 

References

  • “Practical Intranet Security: Overview of the State of the Art and available   
  • Technologies”, P.Ashley, M.Vandenwauver, Kluwer Academic Publishers,99
  • ”SESAME: The Solution to Security for Open Distributed Systems”, P.Kaijser, T.Parker, and D.Pinkas, Computer Communications, July,94.
  • http://www.prima.imag.fr/Prima/
  • http://www.webcam.nl/


Author:
Puja Dhar
Lecturer, Institute of Technology & Science
Mohan-Nagar, Ghaziabad-U.P.
puja.dhar@rediffmail.com
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