Securing Personal Network clusters

A Personal Network is a self-organizing, secure and private network of a user’s devices notwithstanding their geographic location. It aims to utilize pervasive computing to provide users with new and improved services. In this paper we propose a model for securing Personal Network clusters. Clusters are ad-hoc networks of co-located personal devices. The ad-hoc makeup of clusters, coupled with the resource constrained nature of many constituent devices, makes enforcing security a challenging task. We propose a novel way of imprinting personal devices and pre-deploying tickets for future authentication. Our key management framework is based on a combination of existing models, albeit modified to match the constraints and assets of Personal Networks. The mechanisms for self organization are original since they need to be tailored to our proposed security framework. All models are designed to be suitable for resource constrained devices yet robust enough for self organization and secure communication.