Vector Approach to Context Data Reliability

Context-aware processing is a part of intensively developed ubiquitous computing andmobile systems. Surrounding awareness is used to introduce new functions and solutions. Somecategories of the context data are taken for security purposes in the context-aware security implementations.This kind of data has to meet some conditions since it is used for decision making aboutsecurity mechanisms adaptation and configuration. One of these conditions is reliability. The paperpresents vector approach to context data reliability assessment introducing mechanism which allowsto assess reliability parameters for further usage in context aware security processing. The followingaspects of the context data are taken into account: interface reliability, data quality, data source reliabilityand security level. Introducing reliability metric for context data may be beneficial to othermechanisms which utilize context data. The vector form of reliability may be even more flexible thanthe scalar value.