Investigating Privacy and Security Issues in Wearable Technology

This literature review investigates the growing concerns surrounding privacy and security within wearable technology. It examines the increasing popularity of wearable devices and their enhanced functionalities, while highlighting the associated risks. The report categorizes key challenges, including security attacks, vulnerabilities, and potential solutions. It analyzes issues like insecure data transmission via Bluetooth, software communication with the cloud, and insecure cloud storage, emphasizing the lack of proper authorization and authentication. The review discusses the impact on user trust and the potential for data breaches, financial loss, and safety issues. It further explores privacy issues related to user identity, location tracking, and time-based data, proposing solutions like secure data transmission, cloud security protocols, and user-controlled GPS functionality. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for robust security measures to ensure the benefits of wearable technology are realized without compromising user privacy and safety.

Running head: INVESTIGATING PRIVACY AND SECURITY ISSUES IN WEARABLE
TECHNOLOGY
INVESTIGATING PRIVACY AND SECURITY ISSUES IN WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
Name of student
Name of university
Author’s note:

1
INVESTIGATING PRIVACY AND SECURITY ISSUES IN WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
Literature review
Security and privacy issues and the solutions
As the market of IoT is making significant advances in the present times, the wearable
technologies is growing in popularity for the convenience as well as the capabilities. The
wearable technology provides the significantly improved functionalities with data
communication in real time, and it also pose a higher privacy and security risks (Arias et al,
2015). Some of the key challenges are the capacity of communication, power consumption,
and the constraints in design, the security and privacy issues. Moreover, the key challenge in
the wearable technology has been analysed as the security challenges. It could be
significantly further categorised in three major sections namely the security attacks,
vulnerability, as well as the security solutions. With the analysis of several researches
executed in the past, it could be analysed that even though the wearable technology provides
major benefits, there are some crucial challenges that are required to be considered and
analysed (Zhou and Piramuthu 2014). The main security vulnerability within the wearable
technologies could be easily misused by the collection of probable privacy and security
attacks. The loss that could be inflicted by the breaking and entering into the system could be
categorised as the integrity, confidentiality, authenticity as well as the availability (Zhang et
al. 2015). The security attacks could be then categorised as the per the two major kinds, the
active attack and the passive attack. The passive attacks intends to gain the password of the
user as well as the sensitive information deprived of breaking into and then make
modification into system while any active attack mainly contrasts along with any passive
attacks where the illegal user intends to break and make modifications into the system (Yang
et al. 2015). When any of the security vulnerability has been significantly deployed, there
would be a loss.

2
INVESTIGATING PRIVACY AND SECURITY ISSUES IN WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
The security as well as the privacy issues could be major reason for the unavailability
of major benefit from the wearable technologies. There could be a significant breach in the
seuciry and then there could be a loss when the security vulnerabilities are not properly
managed. This particular loss could be significantly either the static assets such as the files,
the dynamic assets such as the credit card number or the documents (Zhou et al. 2015). In the
end, it would lead to the loss of data as well as significant financial loss or even significant
safety issues. The most common security issues that has been observed are mainly due to the
unsure data transmission, Bluetooth for the local device storage, the software communication
to the cloud using the the Wi-FI network, or even the cellular, insecure storage of data on the
cloud platform, the significant lack of the proper authorisation and authentication and the lack
of significant physical security controls, which helps in the security attacks (Ching and Singh
2016). Moreover, the trust of the users towards the wearable would significantly decrease and
it would discourage the people that is defined as the devices that helps in connecting among
one another or even to the internet. Some of the common security issues that are observed in
the wearable technologies are as follows:
 The unsecure transmission of the data using the Bluetooth technology for any local device
storage: The wearable technologies mainly depends on the Bluetooth for executing the
transmission of the gathered data from the fixed wearable sensors to integration devices
like the smartphones as presently it could not efficient communicate straight to the
internet. This leads to the exploitation of any kind of bug by any attacker for extracting
the data that has been stored locally like the health-associated records with the utilisation
of the wearable as the access point (Camara, Peris-Lopez and Tapiador 2015). Any
attacker could simply make the use of the sniffers for stealing the unauthorised data by
the detection of the broadcast signals while any wearable device communication using

3
INVESTIGATING PRIVACY AND SECURITY ISSUES IN WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
Bluetooth. The main solution for this threat is the transmission of the data in secured
Bluetooth network that provides the security from any kind of unauthorised users.
 Software communication with the cloud using the Wi-fi network or cellular network: It is
significantly vulnerable in comparison with the transmission of the data using Bluetooth
for the local device storage that has been discussed previously (Motti and Caine 2015).
The attacks that mainly occurs with the exploitation of the security vulnerability includes
the man-in-the-middle as well as the redirection attacks that could cause the data to be
sent to any wrong server. This is mainly due to the fact majority of the personal data
could be breached as the data transmitted from any local storage in the smartphone to any
cloud application has been commonly integrated with the personally identifiable data like
the name, address, email, location and the telephone number for ensuring that complete
data has been sent to any proper account. Therefore, the main potential loss of the private
data is significantly high and the privacy and the safety issues might significantly arise if
the wearer has been identified (Cyr et al. 2014). The transfer of the data in the cloud
could be effectively managed with the implementation of security protocols in the cloud
platform and the cloud providers could use VPN for securing the transmission from the
wearable device to the cloud.
 Unsecure data storing on the cloud: The cloud denotes to the semi-public or public space
on the transmission lines, which mainly exists among endpoints of any transfer. The
cloud storage mainly offers the improved file availability, that the file has been stored in
cloud could be easily viewed any time from a location till the time they possess efficient
access to internet. It could be considered as the most susceptible area within the wearable
aspect because of the amount of the PII or Personally Identifiable Information, which is
made available. The attacks on the cloud are mainly executed by the highly skilled cyber
criminals. The data that has been synchronised in the cloud could be significantly posed

4
INVESTIGATING PRIVACY AND SECURITY ISSUES IN WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
by several risks that includes the distributed denial of service attacks, the SQL injection
attacks or even the back door attacks (Alrawais et al. 2017). The solution for this
particular security challenge is the proper use of the credentials for accessing the account
of the individuals in the cloud platform.
 Lack of authorisation and authentication: Majority of wearable devices frequently do not
emerge with the pre-defined security mechanism like the user authentication or the PIN
system protection characteristics and it commonly stores the data locally deprived of any
encryption. The implementation of PIN or even any kind of user credentials could
effectively solve the lack of the authorisation and authentication issue. The credentials
could be effectively managed by the user and if any security breach has occurred in the
wearable devices then the credentials could be altered for providing additional security.
The privacy issues has been considered as the major challenge that has to be solved in the
present times. Not only the wearable devices could sense, store, and capture the sensitive
information regarding the users, as well as the surroundings but it could also do the task
discreetly and continuously. Privacy attacks that are involved in the Wearable technology
could be effectively categorised into the user-based privacy as well as the data-based privacy,
location based privacy and the time based privacy attacks.
 Data privacy and user identity: The embedded sensors like the cameras as well as the
microphones capture the data regarding the surroundings and the individuals and
frequently the capturing of the data is done without the proper consent of the
individuals. These particular data mainly comprise of the confidential, personal and
the sensitive data that invade the privacy of the users and it poses the privacy
challenges like surveillance. The transmission of the data of individuals should be
done with the proper permission from the users and use of pre-defined security
protocols that ensures the user has complete idea about the data transfer.

5
INVESTIGATING PRIVACY AND SECURITY ISSUES IN WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
 Time as well as the location based privacy: The GPS embedded within the wearable is
able to track the location of any person at any particular time. It provides increased
benefits for the people as it helps them with the navigation but it could also poses
several risks. It mainly raises the serious issues on the privacy of any user, if location
of any person could be tracked. For example, the Symantec exposed that any wearabe
could also execute the location tracking, even though there is no presence of GPS
sensor built in. It occurred due to the fact that the communication that is being done
among the wearable device and the phone could probably broadcast the information
of the location. The company performed the experiment for illustrating that with the
utilisation of the portable scanner, the distinct hardware address that is emitted by any
fitness tracker during syncing to phone of the user using the Bluetooth could be
breached. The solution for this threat is providing the functionality to the user of
allowing the visibility using GPS when they choose to do it. The device must ask for
appropriate permission from the user before activating the location and transmit the
location of the user.

6
INVESTIGATING PRIVACY AND SECURITY ISSUES IN WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
References
Alrawais, A., Alhothaily, A., Hu, C. and Cheng, X., 2017. Fog computing for the internet of
things: Security and privacy issues. IEEE Internet Computing, 21(2), pp.34-42.
Arias, O., Wurm, J., Hoang, K. and Jin, Y., 2015. Privacy and security in internet of things
and wearable devices. IEEE Transactions on Multi-Scale Computing Systems, 1(2), pp.99-
109.
Camara, C., Peris-Lopez, P. and Tapiador, J.E., 2015. Security and privacy issues in
implantable medical devices: A comprehensive survey. Journal of biomedical
informatics, 55, pp.272-289.
Ching, K.W. and Singh, M.M., 2016. Wearable technology devices security and privacy
vulnerability analysis. International Journal of Network Security & Its Applications, 8(3),
pp.19-30.
Cyr, B., Horn, W., Miao, D. and Specter, M., 2014. Security analysis of wearable fitness
devices (fitbit). Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1.
Motti, V.G. and Caine, K., 2015, January. Users’ privacy concerns about wearables.
In International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security (pp. 231-244).
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Yang, K., Zhang, K., Ren, J. and Shen, X., 2015. Security and privacy in mobile
crowdsourcing networks: challenges and opportunities. IEEE communications
magazine, 53(8), pp.75-81.
Zhang, K., Yang, K., Liang, X., Su, Z., Shen, X. and Luo, H.H., 2015. Security and privacy
for mobile healthcare networks: from a quality of protection perspective. IEEE Wireless
Communications, 22(4), pp.104-112.

7
INVESTIGATING PRIVACY AND SECURITY ISSUES IN WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
Zhou, J., Cao, Z., Dong, X. and Lin, X., 2015. Security and privacy in cloud-assisted wireless
wearable communications: Challenges, solutions, and future directions. IEEE wireless
Communications, 22(2), pp.136-144.
Zhou, W. and Piramuthu, S., 2014, June. Security/privacy of wearable fitness tracking IoT
devices. In 2014 9th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI)
(pp. 1-5). IEEE.