Home gateway operating model using reference monitor for enhanced user comfort and privacy

In home network environments, user comfort and privacy are key prerequisites for customer satisfaction and data security. Although methods such as ACLs and others control the user-access for home network devices, most existing methods have yet to satisfactorily address the issues related to a user's comfort level and his or her protection of privacy. Therefore, this paper outlines the proposal for home gateway operating model using reference monitor in an OSGi service platform, whose goal is to enhance the operation required to efficiently meet a user's access, convenience, and privacy concerns. The reference monitor is a collection of access controls for objects, and is also capable of providing the facilities for access control. Furthermore, it adds the element of comfort to user access control, because it is intended as a core part of how subjects interact with objects. The proposed model is based on an RBAC model to effectively manage access control. Its policy is classified into two types (e.g., user-role assignment policy and permission-role assignment policy) in an attempt to not only better protect user privacy, but also to improve the performance of the policy operation. It is argued that the new home gateway model provides sufficient and effective guidelines to suggest future access control policies.