Distributed device networks with security constraints

In today's globalized business world, outsourcing, joint ventures, mobile and cross-border collaborations have led to work environments distributed across multiple organizational and geographical boundaries. The new requirements of portability, configurability and interoperability of distributed device networks put forward new challenges and security risks to the system's design and implementation. There are critical demands on highly secured collaborative control environments and security enhancing mechanisms for distributed device control, configuration, monitoring, and interoperation. This paper addresses the collaborative control issues of distributed device networks under open and dynamic environments. The security challenges of authenticity, integrity, confidentiality, and execution safety are considered as primary design constraints. By adopting policy-based network security technologies and XML processing technologies, two new modules of Secure Device Control Gateway and Security Agent are introduced into regular distributed device control networks to provide security and safety enhancing mechanisms. The core architectures, applied mechanisms, and implementation considerations are presented in detail in this paper.