Secure agent-based management for pervasive environments

A typical pervasive computing scenario may consist of a wide range of devices interconnected through ad-hoc networks. One of the problems that pervasive computing introduces is the management and interaction between these devices, as well as the security implications of this management. We present in this paper an architecture, which provides initial mechanisms to solve these problems. Inspired by trust management systems, our architecture is built on top of a multi-agent system. However, our proposal is sufficiently open to allow the integration with other technologies. Results of our work can be easily applied to existing pervasive computing software and associated technologies.