Towards an Intrusion Detection System for Pervasive Computing Environments

A pervasive computing environment consists of numerous casually accessible, frequently mobile, embedded, handheld devices capable of sensing the environment around it and reacting intelligently to simplify user activities. These devices are distributed everywhere at office, homes, stores, classroom, and are often connected to ad-hoc network and the internet providing access from anywhere and anytime. Access control mechanisms can sometimes fail to provide complete security to these pervasive computing devices as witnessed in infrastructure based networks. The addition of pervasive computing devices to infrastructure based networks makes the problem of intrusion detection even harder. In this paper, the challenges and characteristics of intrusion detection in pervasive computing devices are discussed along with a mobile agents-based solution for both for a network environment made up of infrastructure based network and pervasive computing devices.