An Adaptive Access Control Model with Privileges Overriding and Behaviour Monitoring in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have attracted a lot of interest in the research community because of their wide range of applications. Due to the distributed nature of WSNs and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. Access control is a critical security service in WSNs to prevent unauthorised access from users. Current access control models in WSNs cannot make access control decisions efficiently and effectively when the system faces unexpected and unanticipated events because access control decisions are based on predefined access policies and roles. Sometimes, users may need to access stored data for emergency and immediate data access but the system cannot grant access to this kind of users' request. Based on the needs of real world requirements, we propose an adaptive access control model that builds on the concepts of overriding access privileges and user behaviour monitoring to provide a flexible approach in the access control model. The proposed access control model will adapt to unanticipated events by using privilege overriding and also adjust its decision based on users' behaviour. The proposed approach can make an access control model much flexible and also detect abnormal users' request from authorised users. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed access control model is the first to realize flexibility of access control model by using the concept of possibility-with-override with users' behaviour monitoring in WSNs.