Habtamu Abie, PhD

• 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.

Current Activities

• ASSET - Adaptive Security for Smart Internet of Things in eHealth
  Emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technologies provide many benefits to the improvement of eHealth. However their successful deployment depends on ensuring security and privacy, which need to adapt to their processing capabilities and resource use.
  The primary objective of the ASSET project is to research and develop risk-based adaptive security methods and mechanisms for IoT in eHealth using game theory and context-awareness that increase security to an appropriate level. The security methods and mechanisms will adapt to dynamic changing conditions of IoT, including usability, threats, and diversity/heterogeneity.
  The secondary objective is to increase understanding of, and thus ability to develop, interoperable techniques and algorithms which will predict and measure the risk of damages and future benefits and adapt their decisions upon those predictions.
  ASSET's case study will lead to the design of adaptive strategies for the dynamic interplay between security and data transmission in a mobile patient monitoring system. This will use information of link quality, data transmission rate, and processing capabilities of sensor nodes and smart phones. The security adaptation will take into account the latency, energy consumption and reliability as quality of service (QoS) metrics.
  Funding: Research Council of Norway in the VERDIKT (Core Competence and Value Creation in ICT) program

ASSET Publications:
• Towards Metrics-Driven Adaptive Security Management in E-Health IoT Applications, 7th International Conference on Body Area Networks (BODYNETS 2012), Workshop on Security Tools and Techniques for Internet of Things (SeTTIT 2012), September 24–26, 2012, Oslo, Norway.
• Risk-Based Adaptive Security for Smart IoT in eHealth, 7th International Conference on Body Area Networks (BODYNETS 2012), Workshop on Security Tools and Techniques for Internet of Things (SeTTIT 2012), September 24–26, 2012, Oslo, Norway.


• uTRUSTit - Usable TRUST in the Internet of Things
  The Internet of Things (IoT) will connect a large number of communication and information systems. These systems will be part of everyday life in the same way mobile phones have become part of our lives. The information security properties of the IoT are often difficult to understand for its users, because they are hidden in pervasive systems and small devices manufactured by a large number of vendors. Trustworthiness, security functions and privacy implications are vast, and must be assessable to users and consumers.
  The main focus of the uTRUSTit project lies in its objective to integrate the user directly in the trust chain, guaranteeing transparency in the underlying security and reliability properties of the IoT. The results of uTRUSTit enable system manufacturers and system integrators to express the underlying security concepts to users in a comprehensible way, allowing them to make valid judgements on the trustworthiness of such systems. Further, uTRUSTit's design guidelines on trust help the industry to implement the trust-feedback toolkit developed by uTRUSTit in a secure, usable and accessible way.
  The uTRUSTit project will develop a cognitive model of user trust perception, its requirements, and its complete evaluation in simulation and end user trials.


• PETWeb II -- Privacy-respecting Identity Management for e-Norge
  The project addresses societal challenges concerning the future of electronic identifiers and electronic identities. The Project objectives are:
  1. Building of an interdisciplinary framework for privacy-respecting identity management primarily targeted to web services;
  2. Design of a reference model for privacy-respecting identity management;
  3. Provide and validate methods and tools for the evaluation of requirements and approaches to privacy-respecting identity management
  Funding: Research Council of Norway in the VERDIKT (Core Competence and Value Creation in ICT) program


• 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:
  • GEMOM Middleware Self-healing and Fault-tolerance: a Highway Tolling Case Study, ICSNC 2011 : The Sixth International Conference on Systems and Networks Communications, 2011, 136-142
  • 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)
  • GEMOM Platform Prototype Validation through Case Studies - Main Results and Viewpoints to Exploitation, 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
  • LongRec Final Report
  • Preservation of Trust in Long-Term Records Management Systems
  • J. Ma et al., A Framework for the Assessment of the Trustworthiness of Digital Records over Time, IEEE ISSR-2011 (Third IEEE International Workshop on Security in e-Science and e-Research), Changsha, China, November 16-18, 2011
  • J. Ma et al., On Time, Conflict, Weighting and Dependency Aspects of Assessing the Trustworthiness of Digital Records, DEPEND 2011 (The Fourth International Conference on Dependability), August 21-27, 2011 - French Riviera, Nice/Saint Laurent du Var, France
  • J. Ma et al., Assessment of the Trustworthiness of Digital Records, IFIPTM 2011 5th IFIP WG 11.11 International Conference on Trust Management, June 29 - July 1, 2011, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • J. Ma et al., Development and validation of requirements for evidential value for assessing trustworthiness of digital records over time, Journal of Information, 2011. (To appear)
  • J. Ma et al., Requirements for Evidential Value for the Assessment of the Trustworthiness of Digital Records over Time, IEEE Symposium on Trust, Security and Privacy for Pervasive Applications (TSP) 2009, October 12-14, 2009 in Macau SAR, P.R.China
  • J. Ma et al., Preservation of Trust and Security in Long-Term Record Management, Sixth Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust, Graduate Student Symposium (PST2008), October 1-3, 2008, Delta Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

• SAMPOS - Strategies for Seamless Deployment of Mobile Patient Monitoring Systems
  Factsheet
• CORAS++ - A possible CORAS Adaptive Risk Management - follow-up project!