Title: Security and Privacy in an Internet of Things World
Dr. Daniel W. Engels
Associate Professor,
Computer Science and Engineering Dept.,
Southern Methodist University,
Dallas, Texas, USA
Abstract:
The Internet of Things already surrounds us and is making our lives better in both small and large ways. Toll tags, smart thermostats, and automated industrial monitoring and control systems are just the beginnings of an Internet of Things world. These are the early touch, easily quantified benefits applications. However, the future of the Internet of Things goes beyond these simple applications to a world of truly pervasive computers and smart things that provide us a sixth sense of our world (both nearby and around the globe) and, ultimately, shape the way we think and interact with both physical and virtual objects. As a result of the potential impacts that the Internet of Things will have on how we live our lives, it has become a critical interdisciplinary research field among communications, silicon design, AIDC, data science and systems engineering communities to name just a few. Despite its common popular name, the Internet of Things is defined differently among researchers and developers from different fields. These inconsistencies, or different views of the Internet of Things, lead to a number of technical benefits; however, their integration and deployment will introduce new threats to the security and privacy of users. In this talk, the topic of the Internet of Things will be explained in a new bottom-up manner with some of the main challenging issues including networking, data management and analysis, and security and privacy of smart thing users will be described. Security and privacy are the ultimate gate keepers to the utopian world envisioned with the large scale adoption and use of smart things. As such, the integration of appropriate security mechanisms into the next generation of Internet of Things enabled objects will determine whether smart things are adopted in the near future or their use is left to a distant future.
Biography:
Dr. Daniel W. Engels is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Southern Methodist University. He is the Secretary/Treasurer for the IEEE Technical Committee on RFID for 2014, and he was the Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on RFID in 2011 and in 2012. Dr. Engels is the former Director of Research of the Auto-ID Labs at MIT where he led the development of several RFID protocols including the original “Gen2” protocol. Dr. Engels is an original member of the research team started in 1998 that founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT. Dr. Engels is one of the principal architects of the EPC System, the foundation of the Internet of Things, developed under the Auto-ID Center and licensed to the Uniform Codes Council, now GS1, and adopted by governments and industries around the globe. Dr. Engels received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has over 80 peer reviewed publications and 5 issued patents in RFID, RFID applications, Internet of Things, security, embedded computing, and computer-aided design. Dr. Engels is a member of AIDC 100 and is a Senior Member of IEEE.
