Context-Aware Privacy Preserving in Edge Computing

In edge computing, edge nodes are hierarchically arranged, while data transmission is allowed among edge nodes. Because end devices are the closest to raw data sources, they usually submit requests with sensitive information to the edge nodes. Privacy issues occur during the transmission process. In addition, when an end user sends a request to edge nodes, the end user connects to the closest edge node initially, and the request is passed to the upper-layer edge nodes for further processing when the resources of the initial nodes are exhausted. The resource limitation includes computation, storage capabilities, and the number of users. For example, if a user generates one request to the connected edge node exceeding its computation power, the upper-layer edge node will be involved in the operation. Additionally, the information will be transmitted to the other edge nodes, which might be malicious. Thus, privacy preservation is necessary to prevent privacy leakage from data transition among multiple edge nodes in hierarchical structures.