This project examines how privacy can be systematically incorporated into Internet of Things systems by providing reusable design guidelines and assessment methods for software engineers. As IoT applications increasingly collect and process personal data across diverse contexts, software developers face the challenge of embedding privacy protections into system architectures from the earliest design stages rather than retrofitting them after deployment. The research develops a comprehensive privacy-by-design methodology tailored to the unique characteristics of IoT systems, where data collection is pervasive, devices are resource-constrained, and traditional consent mechanisms are often impractical. The project produces actionable guidelines that map privacy principles to concrete software engineering practices, enabling developers to identify privacy risks, select appropriate mitigation strategies, and verify compliance with regulatory frameworks including GDPR.
A structured privacy assessment methodology accompanies the design guidelines, allowing engineering teams to evaluate the privacy posture of IoT applications at various stages of the development lifecycle. This assessment framework provides repeatable processes for measuring how effectively privacy protections have been integrated into system architectures, supporting continuous improvement throughout the software engineering workflow.
The research also addresses user-centric privacy engineering, investigating how data service composition and crowd-sensed trust aggregation can preserve individual privacy in networked IoT environments. Conducted as a strategic collaboration from 2015 to 2020, the project has generated multiple publications addressing privacy-aware IoT application design, privacy in data service composition, and privacy-preserving trust mechanisms for Internet of People networks.
On The Private Data Synthesis Through Deep Generative Models for Data Scarcity of Industrial Internet of Things
Yen-Ting Chen, Chia-Yi Hsu, Chia-Mu Yu, Mahmoud Barhamgi, Charith Perera,
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII), Volume 19, Number 1, pp. 551-560, Jan. 2023 (9)
Delta-Risk: Towards Context-aware Multi-objective Privacy Management in Connected Environments
Karam Bou-Chaaya, Richard Chbeir, Mansour Naser Alraja, Philippe Arnould, Charith Perera, Mahmoud Barhamgi, Djamal Benslimane,
ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), Volume 21, Issue 2(51), June 2021, (31)
Envisioning Tool Support for Designing Privacy-Aware Internet of Thing Applications
Charith Perera Mahmoud Barhamgi, and Massimo Vecchio,
IEEE Internet of Things Magazine (IOTM), Volume 4, Issue 1, March 2021 (6)
Designing privacy-aware internet of things applications
Charith Perera, Mahmoud Barhamgi, Arosha K. Bandara, Muhammad Ajmal, Blaine Price, Bashar Nuseibeh,
Information Sciences, Volume 512, February 2020, Pages 238-257 (20)
Hybrid Microaggregation for Privacy-Preserving Data Mining
Balkis Abidi, Sadok Ben Yahia, Charith Perera,
Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing (JAIHC), Volume 11, Issue 1, November 2020, Pages 23-38 (16)
Privacy in Data Service Composition
Mahmoud Barhamgi, Charith Perera, Chia-Mu Yu, Djamal Benslimane, David Camacho, Christine Bonnet,
IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (TSC), Volume 13, Issue 4, July-Aug 2020, Pages 639 - 652 (20)
Privacy-preserving Crowd-sensed Trust Aggregation in the User-centeric Internet of People Networks
Muhammad Ajmal Azad, Charith Perera, Samiran Bag, Mahmoud Barhamgi, Feng Hao,
ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS), Volume 5, Issue 1, Article 4 (January 2021), 24 pages
User-centric Privacy Engineering for the Internet of Things
Mahmoud Barhamgi, Charith Perera, Chirine Ghedira, Djamal Benslimane,
IEEE Cloud Computing Magazine (MCC), Volume 5, Issue 5, October 2018, Pages 47-57 (11)
An Automated Negotiation Agent for Permission Management
Tim Baarslag, Alper Alan, Richard Gomer, Muddasser Alam, Charith Perera, Enrico Gerding and M.C. Schraefel,
Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (AAMAS), Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 2017, Pages 380-390 (10)
Privacy Guidelines for Internet of Things: A Cheat Sheet
Charith Perera,
Technical Report, 2017
Privacy Mindset for Developing Internet of Things Applications for Social Sensing: Software Engineering Challenges
Charith Perera, Athanasios V. Vasilakos,
Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Social Sensing (SocialSense 2017), Pittsburgh, USA, April 2017, Page 103-103 (1)
Privacy-Knowledge Modeling for the Internet of Things: A Look Back
Charith Perera, Chang Liu, Rajiv Ranjan, Lizhe Wang, Albert Y. Zomaya,
IEEE Computer Magazine (COM-CS), Volume 49, Issue 12, November 2016, Pages 60-68 (8)
Privacy-by-Design Framework for Assessing Internet of Things Applications and Platforms
Charith Perera Ciaran McCormick, Arosha K. Bandara, Blaine A. Price, Bashar Nuseibeh,
Proceedings of the 6th ACM International Conference on Internet of Things (IoT), Stuttgart, Germany, November 2016, Pages 83-92 (10)
Big Data Privacy in the Internet of Things Era
Charith Perera, Rajiv Ranjan, Lizhe Wang, Samee U. Khan, and Albert Y. Zomaya,
IEEE IT Professional Magazine, Volume 17, Issue 3, June 2015, Pages 32-39 (7)
End-to-End Privacy for Open Big Data Markets
Charith Perera, Rajiv Ranjan, Lizhe Wang,
IEEE Cloud Computing Magazine, Volume 2, Issue 4, July 2015, Pages 44-53 (9)
