Abstract

In this talk, I present highlights of my research in modeling and development of architectures for distributed multimedia systems and information access control. Over decades on-line multimedia services and applications have emerged as a significant and growing part of the information space created in almost all sectors of life. The diverse nature of multimedia data combined with its large volume poses important challenges in organizing, storing, and communicating its content using a Cyber-based system (CBS). These challenges encompass several key components of CBS including network, databases, servers, and OS. In the first part of this talk I elaborate on these challenges and present a high level multimedia synchronization model and associated algorithms as building blocks of a CBS architecture for supporting on-line multimedia applications.

The rapid proliferation of Cyber technology, on the other hand, has spawned several information security challenges. In the second part of my talk, I present a framework for modeling and deploying access control policies for CBS. The focus of my discussion is on context-driven Role Based Access Control model which aims at protecting sensitive information from unauthorized users in various contexts. Information privacy is another major security challenge. In the absence of a privacy-protection mechanism, privacy of individuals can be compromised despite the deployment of an access control mechanism, especially in a multi-domain collaborative environment which is a hallmark of CBS. I present my work on analyzing tradeoff between authorization and privacy mechanisms for databases. I conclude this talk by highlighting my current research activity in Cyber security.

Biography

Arif Ghafoor is currently a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering in 1984 from Columbia University. He joined Purdue University in 1991. Previously he was with the faculty of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Syracuse University. He is engaged in research areas related to multimedia information systems, database security, and parallel and distributed computing. He has served as an editor and a co-guest editor of various journals. He has co-edited a book entitled "Multimedia Document Systems in Perspectives" and has co-authored a book entitled "Semantic Models for Multimedia Database Searching and Browsing" (2000). He has published over 225 journal and conference papers. His research has been sponsored by various government agencies and industrial organizations including NSF, AFSOR, NRL, NYNEX, GE, AT&T, Fuji Electric Company, Intel, IBM, Siemens, and Northrop Grumman. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. He has received the IEEE Computer Society 2000 Technical Achievement Award.

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