Towards the Secure Initialisation of a Personal Distributed Environment

by Scarlet Schwiderski-Grosche, Allan Tomlinson, David B. Pearce

Abstract:

The Personal Distributed Environment, or PDE, represents a new
concept of a computer network that takes a user-centric view of per-
sonal devices to create a purely virtual personal network. A PDE
integrates all devices that are relevant to a user, regardless of their
location, current role, or their specific capabilities. In this paper we
present an overview of the PDE concept and describe how such an
environment may be constructed. Since the user’s devices may be lo-
cated in several different security domains, our focus is on the secure
initialisation of the PDE and to that end, we introduce a step-by-
step procedure describing how user’s devices will join the network in
a secure manner.