Analysis and improvement of a secure key management protocol for e-health applications. (January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kompara, Marko; Kumari, Saru; Hölbl, Marko
• Is Part Of: Computers & electrical engineering. Volume 73(2019)
• Page Start: 97
• Page End: 113
• Publication Date: 2019-01
• Subjects: Body area network -- Body sensor network -- Key agreement -- Security evaluation -- Performance evaluation; Computer engineering -- Periodicals; Electrical engineering -- Periodicals; Electrical engineering -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Ordinateurs -- Conception et construction -- Périodiques; Électrotechnique -- Périodiques; Électrotechnique -- Informatique -- Périodiques; Computer engineering; Electrical engineering; Electrical engineering -- Data processing; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 621.302854
• DOI: 10.1016/j.compeleceng.2018.11.007
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0045-7906

Abstract

Highlights: This paper reviews an existing Key Agreement Scheme for Body Sensor Networks (M. R. Abdmeziem and D. Tandjaoui, "An end-to-end secure key management protocol for e-health applications, " Comput. Electr. Eng., vol. 44, pp. 184–197, May 2015) and shows security flaws in the scheme. The paper proposes a new Key Agreement Scheme that improves upon and is based on the original scheme. A security and performance analysis is performed for the new scheme, which shows it to have a higher security level while maintaining comparable energy consumption to the original scheme. Abstract: A Body Sensor Network is a wireless network of wearable sensors, used primarily in healthcare to monitor the condition of the user. Such networks have high security and reliability requirements, while the devices collecting the data have very limited energy reserves and severe hardware constraints. Constructing security schemes for such networks can, therefore, be very challenging. In this paper, we analyse an existing Key Agreement Scheme. In our review, we discover some flaws in the security of the scheme. To improve the security and prevent malicious entities from gaining access or depleting the limited resources available, we design a new Key Agreement Scheme that is based on the previous scheme. The new scheme achieves a higher security level while maintaining comparable energy consumption.