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Research in Privacy
Information Privacy is commonly seen as the right of individuals to control information about themselves (Brankovic & Estivill-Castro, 1999). Within a Virtual Community, especially one also used to facilitate knowledge discovery, there are a number of privacy issues that must be addressed and resolved in ways other than through privacy laws and policies alone. This is due to the fact that, to date, these laws have proved mainly ineffective. Additionally, there is a growing concern by individuals about their privacy. Web surveys (Srikant, 2001) have identified that 82% of users have said improved privacy policies and methods would matter in web environments. It has also been highlighted (Agarwal, 2002) that in order to develop a secure collaborative environment, such as the virtual community implementation I propose, then it needs to provide authentication, authorization, privacy and data integrity. Therefore, in this research, I propose a number of methods to provide information security for shield privacy and information resources in Virtual Communities. Where shield privacy relates to proposed methods of providing information privacy and information resources encompasses any form of data at rest in any electronic format. This research has also found through the review of current literature, that while a few groups have broached a similar research subject, the proposed solutions are not complete and none have attempted the implementation and testing of the ideas and methods put forward. Therefore, during the course of this research I plan to undertake the implementation, testing and evaluation of my new methodologies and solutions.
Research in Steganography
Steganography is an ancient art of conveying messages in a secret way such that only the receiver knows the existence of the secret message. Digital Steganography is a relatively new field in information systems. Image Steganography is one sub-branch of digital steganography. The fundamental requirements of any steganography models are imperceptibility against detection, high embedding capacity and robustness against attacks. There has always been a trade-off between embedding capacity and imperceptibility. This is because if too much data is hidden in any cover medium, then statistical changes are evident and this gives clues of steganographic usage. Hence the main aim of my research is to propose a new steganographic model which would narrow down this gap so as to achieve high embedding capacity as well as low imperceptibility. This research would follow a science and engineering based research approach because I would propose a new steganographic conceptual framework and validate it by building a prototype.
Research in Cryptography.
Cryptography has been developed quickly since W. Diffie and M. Hellman's seminal paper-New directions in cryptography in 1976. Associated with public key cryptography, a useful tool and the widespread Internet, Electronics commerce was brought out. Therefore, how to protect users' anonymous identifications has been one of the major research fields in public key cryptography. This project is just based on the important property - anonymity. We discuss some problems related between anonymity and group signatures, anonymity and blind signatures, anonymity and undeniable signatures.
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