Secure Content Management In Ambient Environments- how about

In order to strengthen the research on security and ambient intelligence, as well as the relationship between the content management and security work at Philips Research and at Twente University, a joint research project is set up. The work will be carrie

Secure Content ManagementIn Ambient Environments

-how about security andmeta-data?-

A PhD researchco-operation

Willem Jonker, Pieter Hartel, Ling FengNovember 1, 2002, version 1.0

IntroductionIn order to strengthen the research on security and ambient intelligence, as well as therelationship between the content management and security work at Philips Research andatTwenteUniversity, a joint research project is set up. The work will be carried out bytwo PhD students that will be jointly supervised byProf.Dr.Willem Jonker(Philips/UT)andProf.Dr.Pieter Hartel(UT).This document gives a description of the work.Motivation and Scope of the PhD ResearchAmbient Intelligence is an important theme in today's industrial (e.g. Philips [Phi]) andpublic research (e.g. 6`sFramework [ECO1]). Key in Ambient Intelligence is a seamlessintegration of smart technology in the environment. For Philips, the home environmentwith its entertainment technology is an important focal point. Management of seamlessaccess to multi-media content such as audio and video is one of the main functionscarried out in such an ambient home infotainment environment.

When looking at content management in ambient applications, we see that adaptation andpersonalization of content plays a crucial role ([FieOO], [SmyOO]). Adaptation andpersonalization of content is based on meta-data. Meta-data is information about theactual content that gives a characterization of the underlying content.

When looking at seamless access to content, we see that there are also drawbacks:content can flow everywhere and can also be accessed by individuals that should not haveaccess to the content. As a result the need for secure content management is even moreurgent in ambient environments.

Security issues around content protection are currently widely studied and focal point of alot of research and industrial projects on copy protection and digital rights managementtechnology ([Len02]). Most of this work focuses on the content itself. Although peoplerealize that meta-data is a valuable asset; little attention so far is paid to the securityissues of meta-data.

In our visionmeta-datawill become the cornerstone in ambient content management, andas a result security issues aroundmeta-datamanagement will need to be addressed in