Pervasive Business Infrastructure: The Network Technologies, Routing and Security Issues

Abstract

The need for more and more flexibility (in terms of time and location) in business operations, contextbased services, decentralization of business processes, and information processing and innovative services has introduced new ubiquitous environments, sensing technologies, and pervasive devices. This new category of devices, sensors, and ubiquitous environments, has the capabilities to observe the users all the time using sensors; provide timely information to service providers using communication channels; and offer accurate services to users anywhere and anytime through tiny mobile terminals. This chapter provides the users of the pervasive business technologies an overview of the basic infrastructure and protocols used to form these ubiquitous wireless environments and provide context-based comfort, while taking care of confidentiality, secrecy, integrity, and authenticity. Along with an introduction to the markup languages, protocols, and security threats, the chapter concludes with the discussion of a range of common biometric, cryptographi,c and routing solutions.