Recent Advances in Wearable Sensing Technologies.

Wearable sensing technologies are having a worldwide impact on the creation of novel business opportunities and application services that are benefiting the common citizen. By using these technologies, people have transformed the way they live, interact with each other and their surroundings, their daily routines, and how they monitor their health conditions. We review recent advances in the area of wearable sensing technologies, focusing on aspects such as sensor technologies, communication infrastructures, service infrastructures, security, and privacy. We also review the use of consumer wearables during the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and we discuss open challenges that must be addressed to further improve the efficacy of wearable sensing systems in the future.

Healthcare Data Breaches: Implications for Digital Forensic Readiness.

While the healthcare industry is undergoing disruptive digital transformation, data breaches involving health information are not usually the result of integration of new technologies. Based on published industry reports, fundamental security safeguards are still considered to be lacking with many documented data breaches occurring as the result of device and equipment theft, human error, hacking, ransomware attacks and misuse. Health information is considered to be one of the most attractive targets for cybercriminals due to its inherent sensitivity, but digital investigations of incidents involving health information are often constrained by the lack of the necessary infrastructure forensic readiness. Following the analysis of healthcare data breach causes and threats, we describe the associated digital forensic readiness challenges in the context of the most significant incident causes. With specific focus on privilege misuse, we present a conceptual architecture for forensic audit logging to assist with capture of the relevant digital artefacts in support of possible future digital investigations.

Performance Evaluation of Energy-Autonomous Sensors Using Power-Harvesting Beacons for Environmental Monitoring in Internet of Things (IoT).

Environmental conditions and air quality monitoring have become crucial today due to the undeniable changes of the climate and accelerated urbanization. To efficiently monitor environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, and the levels of pollutants, such as fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air, and to collect data covering vast geographical areas, the development of cheap energy-autonomous sensors for large scale deployment and fine-grained data acquisition is required. Rapid advances in electronics and communication technologies along with the emergence of paradigms such as Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) and the Internet of Things (IoT) have led to the development of low-cost sensor devices that can operate unattended for long periods of time and communicate using wired or wireless connections through the Internet. We investigate the energy efficiency of an environmental monitoring system based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons that operate in the IoT environment. The beacons developed measure the temperature, the relative humidity, the light intensity, and the CO2 and VOC levels in the air. Based on our analysis we have developed efficient sleep scheduling algorithms that allow the sensor nodes developed to operate autonomously without requiring the replacement of the power supply. The experimental results show that low-power sensors communicating using BLE technology can operate autonomously (from the energy perspective) in applications that monitor the environment or the air quality in indoor or outdoor settings.

Sensor Technologies for Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Modern society faces serious problems with transportation systems, including but not limited to traffic congestion, safety, and pollution. Information communication technologies have gained increasing attention and importance in modern transportation systems. Automotive manufacturers are developing in-vehicle sensors and their applications in different areas including safety, traffic management, and infotainment. Government institutions are implementing roadside infrastructures such as cameras and sensors to collect data about environmental and traffic conditions. By seamlessly integrating vehicles and sensing devices, their sensing and communication capabilities can be leveraged to achieve smart and intelligent transportation systems. We discuss how sensor technology can be integrated with the transportation infrastructure to achieve a sustainable Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and how safety, traffic control and infotainment applications can benefit from multiple sensors deployed in different elements of an ITS. Finally, we discuss some of the challenges that need to be addressed to enable a fully operational and cooperative ITS environment.

Security Attacks and Solutions in Electronic Health (E-health) Systems.

For centuries, healthcare has been a basic service provided by many governments to their citizens. Over the past few decades, we have witnessed a significant transformation in the quality of healthcare services provided by healthcare organizations and professionals. Recent advances have led to the emergence of Electronic Health (E-health), largely made possible by the massive deployment and adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, cybercriminals and attackers are exploiting vulnerabilities associated primarily with ICTs, causing data breaches of patients' confidential digital health information records. Here, we review recent security attacks reported for E-healthcare and discuss the solutions proposed to mitigate them. We also identify security challenges that must be addressed by E-health system designers and implementers in the future, to respond to threats that could arise as E-health systems become integrated with technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and smart cities.

Analysis of Security Protocols for Mobile Healthcare.

Mobile Healthcare (mHealth) continues to improve because of significant improvements and the decreasing costs of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). mHealth is a medical and public health practice, which is supported by mobile devices (for example, smartphones) and, patient monitoring devices (for example, various types of wearable sensors, etc.). An mHealth system enables healthcare experts and professionals to have ubiquitous access to a patient's health data along with providing any ongoing medical treatment at any time, any place, and from any device. It also helps the patient requiring continuous medical monitoring to stay in touch with the appropriate medical staff and healthcare experts remotely. Thus, mHealth has become a major driving force in improving the health of citizens today. First, we discuss the security requirements, issues and threats to the mHealth system. We then present a taxonomy of recently proposed security protocols for mHealth system based on features supported and possible attacks, computation cost and communication cost. Our detailed taxonomy demonstrates the strength and weaknesses of recently proposed security protocols for the mHealth system. Finally, we identify some of the challenges in the area of security protocols for mHealth systems that still need to be addressed in the future to enable cost-effective, secure and robust mHealth systems.