Security and privacy concerns in assisted living environments

Abstract

Assisted living environments use interconnected devices to assist people with limitations in performing daily activities. In these environments, human activity recognition is critical for detecting abnormal situations, such as falls or health problems, and providing appropriate assistance to inhabitants. Despite their advantages, assisted living environments raise security and privacy concerns due to the collection and storage of sensitive data about their inhabitants. This paper addresses security and privacy concerns related to intelligent environments designed to assist individuals with limitations. It discusses the weaknesses of IoT devices and domotic technologies and presents research conducted by authors to mitigate these issues. This study shows that, despite hardware constraints, it is possible to design a relatively secure assisted living environment that prevents hacker attacks and data leaks. Additionally, it is essential to comprehend which information should be shared with external entities, such as health care services, and when to share it to ensure the inhabitants’ well-being. Our main goal has been to gather knowledge to improve the privacy and data protection of technology-rich assisted living environments implemented to assist people with limitations and their family members in performing their daily tasks.