Privacy preservation in the internet of things

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the future of Internet where users, machines and everyday Things have the ability to sense, communicate and interact with their environment. IoT promises a wide variety of applications to make the human’s life more comfortable, safe and improve quality of life. It’s also considered as big business opportunity for enterprises based on huge quantity of data gathered by connected Things. In the IoT applications such as smart home, smart city, heath and so on, Things cohabit with humans and deal with their personal data even the most private ones. When this data is collected massively and exposed to Internet without an explicit person’s agreement, Things constitute by this way a threat for privacy, which is a universal human right. Thus privacy preservation is one of the most prominent issues in IoT. This paper analyzes the privacy in the context of IoT based on case study, and proposes mechanisms to improve security and preserve privacy. This analysis considers also the economic advantages related to the use of IoT as new business opportunity without personal private data disclosure. The proposed solutions are based on data anonymity technologies with recommendation for users and for developers of IoT application.