Listening to the affected: Security in a Home Area Network

Abstract

With the advent of smart appliances and objects, a smart home has never been this complex. Today’s homes are equipped with all kinds of smart objects capable of internet connectivity. Just a few years ago, a Home Area Network (HAN) only had personal computers and mobile devices making up the network. Today the picture is different, fridges, televisions, coffee machines, aircon, thermostats, and gate motors, just to name a few, are all now capable of communicating with each other and to the internet. This interconnectivity of various systems introduces a level of complexity to a HAN. For instance, these smart appliances and objects might be using different communication protocols, each manufacturer may implement security differently. With the lack of standardization when it comes to Internet of Things (IoT), this complexity opens up loopholes in the security of the smart home. 

By looking at a smart home as a complex system made up of sub-systems that may impact the security of the whole network, systems thinking will be a suitable approach to address this problem. Systems thinking was developed as a means to address the complexity created by the interdependency of various systems, both existing and new ones.

In this paper, we propose addressing the data privacy issues of smart homes by looking at the problem from a systems thinking perspective. With this perspective in mind, we can address the security problems in a smart by looking at it as a complex system. We relate the smart home as a system to Churchman’s definition of a system as a set of parts coordinated to accomplish a set of goals.  In this research, Critical Systems Thinking has been adopted as the preferred methodology for this research.