Wednesday 20 February 2013

Over the last week, I read a paper "Ensuring Distributed Accountability for Data Sharing in the Cloud" and spent time analysing it. I also researched and read another paper on De-Perimeterised Sharing of Data which also focuses on Self-Protecting Data.

Also, I have been busy working throughout the week on contributing a small part to another publication. I had to write a paragraph on my HeartBeat project and take a snapshot of my developed system so far. This is still a work in progress.

Also, I received an email this week from the book chapter reviewers regarding that my submitted book chapter had been accepted to be included in the book. I now have to make changes as per the reviewers comments and submit the final version by 15th March. So far, I have addressed most of the trivial comments such as removing a section, or renaming etc. I need time to work on the more non-trivial ones.

Regarding the HeartBeat system, I am now doing some light programming tasks to get ready for the programming of the security layer. I will start coding the security layer maybe next week. There is a lot of work to do here.

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Last week, I spent time reading papers on ways a data owner can share his data in the Cloud while maintaining control over how his data is being used. Since data consumers may be untrusted and can send the data owner's data to friends via email or make illegal copies of the data which may not respect the privacy of the data owner, I am trying to incorporate ways a data owner can track how his data is being used. I read a paper entitled "A Software-Hardware Architecture for Self-Protecting Data" which combines an access control policy with the data which controls how the data is to be used. I will continue to read more papers along this path.

Regarding the app, I have successfully updated the Client application which reads the latest ECG and stores the ECG reading into a JPEG file for offline monitoring by a doctor or nurse. I have shown this to my supervisor and am now ready to implement the security layer for the app. I will spend 2-3 weeks on this. I will continue to post updates on this as they occur.

Tuesday 5 February 2013

Yesterday, I just completed my probation and managed to pass. I was confused at some of the questions, but with the help of my supervisor, I was able to pass and continue my candidature. I need to keep reading and get a better understanding of my topic. I am now looking to provide better access control for the data owner in a distributed computing environment where the data owner may share data with other users in his group but control how his data is being used. I will be spending the next couple of weeks reading literature on this.

Meanwhile, regarding the ECG application, I have now managed to successfully get a clean ECG curve. The app now displays in real-time, an ECG waveform and also the heart rate of the person using the sensors. This was mainly a result of incorporating code from AliveTec. I spent the last week trying to understand their sample code and managed to successfully incorporate it into the app. I still need to incorporate this code into the client side application as well. I am also looking for ways to provide automated ECG analysis to automatically determine cardiac arrhythmias.