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Security and Privacy

E-learning Infrastructure for Mobile Virtual University

Virtual Interactive Learning	Virtual Classroom Communications Tools	Interactive Student Assessment	Course Management and Development Tools
Universal Profile Management
Security and Privacy Protection

Researchers from NRC-IIT and Tamkang University (Taiwan) are working together on E-learning Infrastructure for Mobile Virtual University, a three-year NRC – National Sciences Council (Taiwan) collaborative project that began in April 2002.

The project aims to research and develop an infrastructure to support mobile and distributed e-learning that provides security, privacy, authentication, mobile identity management and new communication tools for cooperative and interactive learning.

While NRC-IIT researchers’ focus on several aspects related to security for electronic delivery of education in general, they will build proof-of-concept demonstrations of the technology for the Mobile Virtual University Software System.

More specifically, NRC-IIT researchers are working on the integration of authentication, policy-based management of security, and privacy:

Authentication

In the administration of online courseware, maintaining and managing the identity of every system user is of critical importance. As such, researchers seek to develop a technique that provides secure authentication, without the complexity of traditional approaches.

Security Management

This work focuses on developing a policy-based approach for managing security and on developing techniques and the architecture for managing overall security for access to online, distributed education systems.

Privacy

A large amount of information about individuals may be collected as they use online services. And the major concern for online users when using online services is the privacy of their interactions over the network. This work builds on and extends other research in developing confidential networking approaches, such as in PISA and in e-manufacturing, to include automatic negotiation of privacy policies in the transfer of data to services, and record keeping to offer proof of privacy agreements being upheld.

Research results are expected to have an impact on computer supported education applications.

Opportunities

While this research pertains to education applications, other applications for the technologies include e-Business, computer supported collaborative work and other interactive or online services.

The technology research results, including software components, system prototype and research documents can be transferred to interested organizations to form novel services. If you would like more detailed information about this project, please feel free to contact us.

Research Contact

Larry Korba
Group Leader
Information Security
NRC Institute for Information Technology
1200 Montreal Road
Building M-50, Room 286A
Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6
Telephone: +1 (613) 998-3967
Fax: +1 (613) 952-7151
E-mail: Larry.Korba@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

Business Contact

Dr. George Forester
Business Development Officer
Business Development Office, NCR
NRC Institute for Information Technology
1200 Montreal Road
Building M-50, Room 203
Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6
Telephone: +1 (613) 993-3478
Fax: +1 (613) 952-0074
E-mail: George.Forester@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca