A Context-Aware Authentication System for Mobile Cloud Computing

Context-aware authentication systems are becoming more and more interesting, as mobile devices are using pervasive computing environments. They can be implemented in different ways and ensure secure authentication by analyzing the user behavior from his device. Context-aware authentication systems add an additional security layer when implemented in conjunction with the password-based authentication methods. Also, they can replace, in some scenarios, the conventional authentication methods. In this paper, we propose a practical context-aware authentication system which is cost-effective and easy to implement. The environmental information is only sent when the user makes an authentication request which renders our system more practical and lightweight. However, the authentication request goes through different steps in order to make a decision regarding the access.