American University of Sharjah team wins international award for research on cyber security

An American University of Sharjah (AUS) team received the IEEE International Symposium on Sensing and Instrumentation in the IoT Era Award in China earlier this month for its research on cyber security and smart everyday devices known as the “Internet of Things” (IoT).

The team’s research was presented in the paper “Securing Low-Resource Edge Devices for IoT Systems,” which was selected from 67 shortlisted research papers. It addressed how to secure the data stored in smart devices while keeping the devices at an affordable price for everyday consumers.  

The paper was co-authored by computer science student Shams Shapsough; Dr. Fadi Aloul, Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, HP Institute Director and Interim Director for the High-Performance Computing Center; and  Dr. Imran Zualkernan, Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at AUS.

“When we connect everyday devices to the Internet, they become known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Examples could include being able to monitor what is happening in your house through your home camera, which is connected to your phone, or monitoring the blood pressure and certain vital signs for your ill parents or loved ones from afar to make certain decisions swiftly,” said Dr. Aloul.

He noted that Gartner, the global leading advisory and research firm on information technology, predicted that there will 22 billion IoT devices worldwide by 2020, which is a conservative estimate in comparison to what large multinational companies predict.

“If you want to make these devices available for public consumption, they need to be cheap, which also means that they do not have the proper systems to secure your data,” said Dr. Aloul. “Accordingly, this paper looked at how we can maintain the affordability of these IoT devices, which will flood our lives, while maintaining the security of our data.”