Title: Context-aware web services for security control and privacy preservation in an RFID supply chain

Authors: Manmeet Mahinderjit-Singh; Xue Li; Zhanhuai Li

Addresses: School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia ' School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia ' School of Computer Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China

Abstract: Automation and optimisation of supply-chain activities are made possible by radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. RFID supply chain performance can be enhanced by integrating RFID functions into the web service paradigm. However, the use of RFID involves growing privacy and security concerns, in part because the lack of RFID tag capacity places the whole supply-chain loop at risk of security such as product counterfeiting. In this paper, we tackle the security and privacy challenges in RFID by using context-aware web service technology. By employing a seven-layer trust framework, we design the functionalities to comply with web service architecture. In order to address the security and privacy problems, we also use the context parameters such as location and time to model the situations of RFID tags. A complete case of RFID-enabled supply chain in an EPCglobal network using context-aware web services is provided to tackle the RFID security and privacy challenges.

Keywords: radio frequency identification; RFID; supply chain management; SCM; context-awareness; web services; security control; privacy preservation; product counterfeiting; trust framework; RFID tags.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITM.2013.051629

International Journal of Information Technology and Management, 2013 Vol.12 No.1/2, pp.39 - 66

Received: 01 Mar 2011
Accepted: 31 Aug 2011
Published online: 19 Dec 2013 *

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