Privacy Concerns of Sensor Networks - Coursework Example

What are the privacy concerns about sensor networks, and what are some of the solutions? One of the problems with sensor networks is that they can beabused to spy on individuals. For instance, employers might use them to spy on employees, neighbors on other neighbors, shopkeepers on their customers, etc. (Perrig, 2004, p. 55). This is because these sensors are getting smaller and more high tech with each passing year, so they are virtually undetectable. In order to curtail abuse, new laws must be put into place and individuals who abuse these sensor networks must be aggressively pursued.

Furthermore, individuals who want to use the sensor networks for legitimate purposes – say shopkeepers who need to surveil customers to make sure that they are not shoplifting – need to first apply for a license or permit to do so, and must make a prominent disclosure that these devices are in place. This is necessary to protect the privacy of all involved.What are some of the security issues with sensor networks and some of the solutions? Information that is sent over the networks may be modified by hackers, rendering it unavailable.

The time synchronization of sensor networks may also be thwarted by adversaries by masquerade attacks, replay attacks and delay attacks. (Bojkovic, 2008, pp. 107, 112). An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is one way of combating threats. The IDS protects the WSN by monitoring it, alerting the user that an attack has occurred and reconfiguring the network and marking the root of the malicious problem. The IDS works either by preventing known attacks by matching attack signatures against the monitored system, or by anomaly detection, in which anomalies in data profiles are identified.

The first of these solutions has the drawback of not recognizing new attacks; the second has the drawback of creating a high number of false alarms.What are some of the other problems with sensor networks, other than privacy and security issues? One of the problems with sensor networks is the risk of data misrepresentation, as all relevant information is impossible to gather in the sensornet environment, as all data that is collected represents data from a discrete time and space, hence it might be taken out of context.

Also, the readings are only approximate for the same reason – that the data collected represent the state of the world at a particular time and space, which is the time and space where the samples were acquired. Therefore, the accuracy of the data that is acquired is subject to misrepresentation and inaccuracies even in situations where security is not compromised.