Considerations for mobile authentication in the Cloud

The Cloud promises significant benefits and opportunities for key players in the mobile communication industry as well as the end users. However, along with these opportunities comes a plethora of security issues including potential attacks, identity authentication, personal data management and privacy. There are issues with the use of legacy security mechanisms and interoperability of the various Smartphone platforms as well as the virtualisation products that are meant to assist with Smartphone security and stability. This paper first considers the general security concerns and how a Subscriber Identity Module-based security framework could be used. It goes on to introduce Smartphone virtualisation and proposes a framework for comparing product capabilities. Finally, use cases are discussed related to personal data security, including data on removable components.