The contradiction between the growing demand for healthcare and the lack of professional medical staff urgently needs to be resolved. Healthcare wireless sensor technology is an important option to resolve this contradiction. Patients use wearable devices to collect various health indicators and send them to doctors for diagnosis in a timely manner. This breaks the time and space constraints in traditional medical methods. Patient's data is transmitted over a public network. Therefore, protecting data security and patient privacy has become an urgent issue for healthcare wireless sensor networks (HWSNs). In this article, we first presented a system model for certificateless designated verifier anonymous aggregate signature (CL-DVAAS) scheme for HWSNs, and investigated the security attributes. We then gave a concrete construction and showed the security proofs. We finally compared the new scheme with several other schemes, and the results show that the new scheme is more computationally efficient.

Safe and efficient collection of users’ electronic consumption data is a basic function of the smart grid. Anonymous aggregate signature is a fine option to realize this feature, which can not only reduce the computing cost of the data center (DC) but also protect the user’s identity information from leaking. The security proofs of all known identity-based aggregate signature (IBAS) schemes were completed in the random oracle model (ROM). Regrettably, these schemes are not necessarily secure in real life. In this article, we first propose the system model and security demands of an identity-based designated verifier anonymous aggregate signature (IB-DVAAS) scheme for smart grids. We then come up with a concrete scheme, only the designated DC can check the validity of an aggregate signature, but it cannot recognize the real identity of the signers. Next, we display the security proofs in the standard model. Finally, we conduct an analysis on performance for six aggregate signature schemes. Only three pairing operations are required and hash-to-point operations are not used, the calculation cost of the new scheme is lower than that of other schemes.

In healthcare wireless sensor networks (HWSNs), wireless sensors are placed on the patient, which collect the patient’s vital signs parameters and various environmental information, and send these data to the doctor, so that the doctor is able to perform real-time remote monitoring for the patient. The patient’s vital signs parameters contain a lot of private information. It is very likely to cause the leakage of patient’s private information if these parameters are transmitted through the public channel. In addition, many patients do not want doctors to know their true identity. We designed a certificateless anonymous signcryption (CL-ASC) scheme for HWSNs in this article. It encrypts the patient’s vital signs parameters, authenticates the legitimacy of the sensor, and realizes the anonymity of the sensor. We then showed the security proofs of new scheme in the standard model. Finally, we compared the performance of the six schemes. Since only three pairing operations are used, the new scheme enjoys higher computation efficiency and is suitable for HWSNs.