Canterbury Christ Church University expert in Hybrid Smart Home Security, Dr Man Qi, shares her thoughts on Some Home Security in the context of the Internet of Things.

Introduction to Smart Home Security

In a Smart Home, more and more everyday devices and sensors connect, communicate, transfer and process data. With broad interdependency in Smart Home systems, there are numerous and increasing cyber threats appearing due to the complexity of the Smart Home, which has potentially massive consequences on the life, health and safety of the inhabitants. This illustrates how enhancing network security in a Smart Home becomes vitally important to ensure the safety of people living in an increasingly connected environment.

The threats and vulnerabilities to Smart Home security include modifying packets, injecting packets and men-in-the-middle. For security and privacy, we propose a hybrid intrusion detection system which will help to significantly reduce attacks on Smart Home system. Our research will provide security and privacy schemes for smart devices to prevent intruder in the middle attacks so that smart devices can communicate safely in and outside Smart Home.

The following topics will help you to learn about Smart Home security and related systems.

Main Entities in Smart Home
Gadgets; Universal Home Gateway (UHG); Smart Home Operator (SHO); Smart Home User (SHU); Unified application programming interface (UAPI)

Types of Attacks and Tacking Toolkits
Network layer attacks: unauthorized access, gateway attacks, sniffing and Denial-of-Service attacks; Fake access point. Tools: Wireshark, Snort

Penetrating Tests
For risk evaluation and info assets profiling. Setting up Smart Home testbed; Simulating attacks for testing

Intrusion Detection Schemes (IDS) for Smart Home Network
IDS is to detect, identify suspicious activities on the computer system and network find out accessing system or data without legitimate access. There are different types of intrusion detection systems: Misuse (signature-based) Detection Systems; Anomaly Detection Systems; and Hybrid Intrusion Detection Systems. We proposed a Smart Hybrid Intrusion Detection System (SHIDS).

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