Ms. Hinds is a graduate student at the University of Idaho where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science with an emphasis in Information Assurance. Her area of research lies in the area of wireless sensor network security.  Ms. Hinds received her M.A.  in computer Science from  Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Ms. Hinds is also an experienced Instructor having taught at Old Dominion University, Eastern Washington University, The University of Idaho and Norfolk Sate University.

Presentation

Security issues in wireless sensor networks

Abstract: Wireless sensor networks (WSN’s) are low cost sensors deployed over a specified area to gather information about the specific environment. Typical information gathered includes heat, temperature, motion and chemical composition. These sensors are used by military, environmental health professionals and hazardous monitoring technicians. The sensors cannot always be physically observed and as a result are subject to a wide range of attacks. An enemy could add a hostile node to the network, jam the network with a radio transmitter and even physically remove a network node. It is essential that these networks be protected from confidentiality, integrity and availability attacks. Unfortunately because of their small size many of the approaches used in traditional networks cannot be applied to wireless sensor networks. They have limited life because of their battery source, small memory and limited computational power. What is needed are new approaches to confront the challenges posed by these networks. In this presentation I survey some current security issues in WSN’s and describe some unresolved problems in this new exciting area.