SmartNet: Secure Content Sharing for Peer-to-Peer Smart Group Spaces

Modern smart devices such as smart phones and tablets are becoming more pervasive in society, and at the same time are generating and storing more content. Users have become used to maintaining data on cloud-based servers using simple interfaces, but they find that it is costly due to data costs for uploading and downloading files. Due to publicity given to compromised data stored in cloud-based servers, users are hesitant to store sensitive data in the cloud. Current research points to the fact that peer-to-peer mobile data storage solutions are becoming more viable, thereby solving some concerns that users have. To complement this research focus, this research presents SmartNet, an Android application which brings peer-to-peer content sharing capabilities to smart devices. Devices are grouped in smart group spaces, where the preferences of the owner of a group determines access to content in the group. The smart group space access control policy is implemented by the SmartNet prototype. The SmartNet prototype is evaluated where results indicate that content can be shared flexibly, overcoming cloud-based storage problems.