Privacy Concerns in Smart Indoor Environments in the Internet of Everything Era: A Smart University Campus Case Study

In the Internet of Everything era, indoor environment provides multiple benefits across different domains to their occupants such as improving their well-being and health, ensuring their safety, providing valuable assistance to their tasks and enhancing their experience using various types of intelligent sensors and devices. So far, we witnessed smart environments thriving in education, as they improve the overall experience, efficiency and education. One prominent example of is the smart university campus, empowered by IoE systems. Initially, such data is not considered sensitive, private and confidential to the occupants. However, through statistical analysis and machine learning, and in combination with heuristics and public information acquired, it can pose a significant risk to their privacy as it can directly leak personal information regarding their preferences, needs and interests. Unfortunately, the ICT systems of universities were targeted by numerous cyber attacks in the past. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before smart university campuses form the attack surface to novel privacy-leakage attacks. Hence, there is clear need for detailed and in-depth investigation. In this paper, we conduct a study on how the smart university campuses could leak sensitive information. We discuss how such information could threaten the occupants and their privacy, both in cyber and physical space, and the challenges related to their protection. Finally, we provide possible recommendations.