Traditional centralized data storage and processing solutions manifest limitations with regards to overall operational cost and the security and auditability of data. One of the biggest issues with existing solutions is the difficulty of keeping track of who has had access to the data and how the data may have changed over its lifetime; while providing a secure and easy-to-use mechanism to share the data between different users. The ability to electronically regulate data sharing within and across different organizational entities in the supply chain (SC) is an open issue that is only addressed partially by existing legal and regulatory compliance frameworks. In this article, we present Cydon, a decentralized data management platform that executes bespoke distributed applications utilizing a novel search and retrieve algorithm leveraging metadata attributes. Cydon utilizes a smart distributed ledger to offer an immutable audit trail and transaction history for all different levels of data access and modification within a SC and for all data flows within the environment. Results suggest that Cydon provides authorized and fast access to secure distributed data, avoids single points of failure by securely distributing encrypted data across different nodes while maintains an “always-on” chain of custody.

By law, schools are required to protect the well-being of students against problems such as on-campus bullying and physical abuse. In the UK, a report by the Office for Education (OfE) showed 17% of young people had been bullied during 2017–2018. This problem continues to prevail with consequences including depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and eating disorders. Additionally, recent evidence suggests this type of victimisation could intensify existing health complications. This study investigates the opportunities provided by Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) data towards next-generation safeguarding. A new model is developed based on blockchain technology to enable real-time intervention triggered by IoMT data that can be used to detect stressful events, e.g., when bullying takes place. The model utilises private permissioned blockchain to manage IoMT data to achieve quicker and better decision-making while revolutionising aspects related to compliance, double-entry, confidentiality, and privacy. The feasibility of the model and the interaction between the sensors and the blockchain was simulated. To facilitate a close approximation of an actual IoMT environment, we clustered and decomposed existing medical sensors to their attributes, including their function, for a variety of scenarios. Then, we demonstrated the performance and capabilities of the emulator under different loads of sensor-generated data. We argue to the suitability of this emulator for schools and medical centres to conduct feasibility studies to address sensor data with disruptive data processing and management technologies.

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) has emerged as a unique implementation of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). These networks promise to increase road safety and improve the driving experience by exploiting recent advances in wireless technologies for both intra-vehicle and inter-vehicle communications. Physical layer security is a promising alternative approach to secure communication in VANETs where physical and applications' constraints encourage the use of lightweight and fast cryptographic algorithms. Our work focuses on the quantisation stage of the secret generation process, by reviewing existing schemes in the public domain and associated performance metrics. Evaluations are done through simulation with the aid of a wireless channel model which includes three-dimensional scattering and scatterers' mobility. Preliminary findings show that RSS-based algorithms do not perform efficiently in the proposed vehicular stochastic wireless model. Hence they are not able to satisfy the typical low latency required in safety-related broadcasting messaging. We conclude that more research is desirable to design protocols capable of taking advantage from the nodes' high-mobility and the consequent variability of both coherence intervals and level crossing rates, to further improve secret bit extraction throughput.