Habtamu Abie, Ph.D.

Adaptive and Evolving Security (AES)
• Security for distributed systems, distributed object computing (CORBA, EJB, DCOM/ActiveX)
• Digital Rights Management, Privacy, Trust, Policy and Risk Management
• Mobile ad-hoc network, ubiquitous and ambient intelligent computing (self-containdness, self-protecting, self-learning, self-adapting, self-healing, expeditiousness, etc.)
• Architecture and methodology, formal methods and tools
• Data acquisition and control systems, hard real-time systems
• Mobile and personal computing.

A book about Digital Rights Management

In the digital world the management and protection of digital assets and the rights associated with them from unauthorized access, use and dissemination has for a long time been a matter of concern for many rights holders, and the protection of privacy a matter of concern for many users. A distributed Digital Rights Management (DRM) system is ideally suited to providing the necessary protection and management. This book investigates and describes a distributed DRM model, which fulfills this purpose. This analysis should be especially useful to professionals in e-Government, e-Business, e-Entertainment, e-Learning, and e-Health, to all stakeholders in the Intellectual Property (IP) value chain, content producers, owners, distributors, consumers, technology providers, etc., and to anyone who is planning to protect and manage rights in connection with any form of digital information in a free, balanced, equitable and commercially viable society.

Current Activities

• Conferences and Workshops
• 2nd International Symposium on Middleware and Network Applications (MNA 2011) part of 8th International Conference on Information Technology : New Generations (ITNG 2011), April 11-13, 2011, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
• 2011 International Conference on Network Computing and Information Security and 2011 International Conference on Multimedia and Signal Processing, 14-15 May 2011, Guilin, China


• GEMOM - Genetic Message Oriented Secure Middleware
  The GEMOM project is funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Its focus is the significant and measurable increase in the end-to-end intelligence, security and resilience of complex, distributed information systems. The primary objective of GEMOM is to be able to rectify vulnerability to faults through researching, developing and deployment of a prototype of a messaging platform that is evolutionary, self-organising, self-healing, scalable and secure.
  
  GEMOM Publications:
  • Advances in Adaptive Secure Message Oriented Middleware for Distributed Business Critical Systems, 8th International Conference of Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics (ICNAAM 2010), 19-25 September 2010, Rhodes, Greece
  • Applicability of Security Metrics for Adaptive Security Management in a Universal Banking Hub System, 1st International Workshop on Measurability of Security in Software Architectures (MeSSa 2010), Copenhagen, Denmark, August 23, 2010
  • Self-Healing and Secure Adaptive Messaging Middleware for Business Critical Systems, In: International Journal on Advances in Security, Vol. 3, No. 1&2, July 2010
  • Innovations and Advances in Adaptive Secure Message Oriented Middleware - the GEMOM Project, 2nd Workshop on Sharing Field Data and Experiment Measurements on Resilience of Distributed Computing Systems (RDCS 2010)
  • Development of Measurable Security for a Distributed Messaging System, In: International Journal on Advances in Security, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2009, ISSN 1942-2636, pp. 358-380 (Published in March 2010) http://www.iariajournals.org/security/
  • Robust, Secure, Self-Adaptive and Resilient Messaging Middleware for Business Critical Systems,The First International Conference on Adaptive and Self-adaptive Systems and Applications, ADAPTIVE 2009, November 15-20, 2009 - Athens/Glyfada, Greece, Best Paper Award
  • Development of Security Metrics for a Distributed Messaging System, The 3rd International Conference on Application of Information and Communication Technologies, AICT2009, Azerbaijan, Baku, 14-16 October 2009
  • Adaptive Security and Trust Management for Autonomic Message-Oriented Middleware, IEEE Symposium on Trust, Security and Privacy for Pervasive Applications (TSP) 2009, October 12-14, 2009 in Macau SAR, P.R.China
  • Identification of Basic Measurable Security Components for a Distributed Messaging System, The 3rd International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies (SECURWARE) 2009, June 18-23, 2009 - Athens/Glyfada, Greece, Best Paper Award
  • GEMOM - Genetic Message-Oriented Secure Middleware - Messaging is a business worth many billions of Euros annually
  • A new European concept for secure messaging - a more secure and cost-effective data communications solution developed in Europe
  • GEMOM - Significant and Measurable Progress beyond the State of the Art, The Third International Conference on Systems and Networks Communications, ICSNC 2008, October 26-31, 2008 - Sliema, Malta
  • Project factsheet
  
  GEMOM Case Studies:
  • Collaborative business portal: This portal is intended as a generic platform to facilitate collaborative working between professionals in a local government setting with the range of professionals – e.g., the emergency services co-ordination business portal.
  • Dynamic linked exchange: This exchange is intended to match the procurement needs to available suppliers and specialising in local government / SME actors.
  • Financial market data delivery: This service is to deliver trading signals for a range of financial markets to private and institutional investors.
  • Dynamic road management system: This system is a complex operational system for distributing road network traffic and mobility information to a wide range of potential consumers.
  • Banking Scenario: Money Transfers: This system is a “Universal Banking HUB” in a central architectural position as a pervasive pivoting component of the bank’s IT architecture that should be able to exchange, both internally and externally, several types of messages, each representing a specific kind of business fact.
• MARIAGE - Making Rich Media Accessible for Generations
  "A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only the degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers."- Bertrand Russell
  Factsheet
• LongRec - Records Management over Decades
  To establish and maintain confidence in the preservation of trust and security in records over time, and to use evidential value of a record as an index for the degree of trust and confidence.
  Project factsheet
• SAMPOS - Strategies for Seamless Deployment of Mobile Patient Monitoring Systems
  Factsheet
• CORAS++ - A possible CORAS Adaptive Risk Management - follow-up project!