Securing Emergency Response Operations Using Distributed Trust Decisions

Abstract

Providing access to relevant confidential information during an emergency increases the efficiency of emergency response operations. Existing approaches rely on a centralised on-line authority to regulate access to emergency applications and data. Unfortunately, it cannot be guaranteed that the central authority is available during an incident. Additionally, the central authority must be trusted to manage access to restricted data of each participating organisation. Using a physical security token for decentralised trust decisions to gain transient access to emergency applications and data mitigates these problems. Therefore, we propose the Attestation Verification Device (AVD) combined with a proper administration infrastructure and suitable protocols. Our solution allows to distribute the administration responsibility in a way which empowers all participating emergency services and organisations to manage their own applications and confidential data.

Dynamic agent platform discovery for real-time resource selection

“…Since security is a serious obstacle to wider adoption of agents in real-world usage [6] we believe mobility of agents must be addressed in parallel with security challenges. The security issues faced by both mobile agents and mobile agent hosts were addressed for example in [8]. Our SAI uses predefined processes to automate information collection by mobile agents.…”