Context and location-aware encryption for pervasive computing environments

Pervasive computing promises to revolutionize computing, empower mobile users, and enhance mobility, customizability and adaptability of computing environments. Intrinsic to the notion of such environments is the capturing of location and context information. Context awareness and validation enables significant functionality to pervasive computing applications, users, resources and the ways they interact. Much of this functionality depends on validating context information and using it for granting access to data or resources. In this paper we propose an encryption and access control framework that uses both context and identity to determine whether an entity or a group of entities may access protected services, data, devices, and other resources. We assume that the resources are context-sensitive, thus requiring the requesting entity to be under a specific context before it is able to access the resource or decrypt the information. Our approach is unique in the way that we decouple context from identity, which adds extra security, facilitates value-added services, and enables efficient key management for group communication.