Status: concluded
Period: October 2020 – September 2023
Funding: 437.750 € (30.000 € for Nexa)
Funding organization: EU Horizon 2020 Programme
Person(s) in charge: Juan Carlos De Martin (coordinator), Giacomo Conti (Researcher).
Executive summary
The objective of this project is to test a secure-by-design and consistent software framework to improve the resilience of Interconnected Smart Home Systems at all stack levels.
Background
Smart Home devices are increasingly widespread in today’s society. However, this emerging market still has noticeable barriers and concerns, mainly related to cyber security and safety, as well as privacy and integrity of produced and consumed data. As of today, most of the state-of the-art Smart Home devices typically use custom and proprietary security solutions, which do not take into account interactions with other devices in the Smart Home system. Moreover, developers have to strive in developing applications adaptable to different systems and architectures, where security aspects are often neglected or not properly addressed. This results in security vulnerabilities, a lack of privacy-oriented management of data and issues in setting up multi-vendor systems.
Objectives
SIFIS-Home aims to address these concerns by providing a full-stack, flexible software framework targeting application developers, Smart Home administrators and end-users. Needs to address these aspects for IoT environments and their interaction with the human users have also been identified by the four pilot projects of the European Cyber Competence Network, whose common vision is aligned with the principles followed by SIFIS-Home. Regarding Nexa Center’s primary contribution to the project, privacy problems and ways to address them have been analysed and proposed, and advice is being provided throughout the architecture’s development.
Results
Nexa has been providing legal advice on privacy and security matters and will be providing it throughout the duration of the project. A 35-page report on legal and ethical aspects of smart home devices and on the overall architecture of the SIFIS-HOME project was completed in March, which also offered suggestions on how to potentially build a privacy control dashboard.