The possibility of a massive, networked infrastructure of diverse entities partaking in collaborative applications with each other increases more and more with the proliferation of mobile devices and the development of ad hoc networking technologies. In this context, traditional security measures do not scale well. We aim to develop trust-based security mechanisms using small world concepts to optimise formation and propagation of trust amongst entities in these vast networks. In this regard, we surmise that in a very large mobile ad hoc network, trust, risk, and recommendations can be propagated through relatively short paths connecting entities. Our work describes the design of trust-formation and risk-assessment systems, as well as that of an entity recognition scheme, within the context of the small world network topology.

Role-based access control (RBAC) and attribute-based access control (ABAC) are currently the most prominent access control models. However, they both suffer from limitations and have features complimentary to each other. Due to this fact, integration of RBAC and ABAC has become a hot area of research recently. We propose an access control model that combines the two models in a novel way in order to unify their benefits. Our approach provides a fine-grained access control mechanism that takes into account the current contextual information while making the access control decisions.

Use of video surveillance has substantially increased in the last few decades. Modern video surveillance systems are equipped with techniques that allow traversal of data in an effective and efficient manner, giving massive powers to operators and potentially compromising the privacy of anyone observed by the system. Several techniques to protect the privacy of individuals have therefore been proposed, but very little research work has focused on the specific security requirements of video surveillance data (in transit or in storage) and on authorizing access to this data. In this paper, we present a general model of video surveillance systems that will help identify the major security and privacy requirements for a video surveillance system and we use this model to identify practical challenges in ensuring the security of video surveillance data in all stages (in transit and at rest). Our study shows a gap between the identified security requirements and the proposed security solutions where future research efforts may focus in this domain.