Location aware security for smart mobile devices

Abstract

Smartphones and related mobile computing device usage is increasing exponentially. People see their Smartphones as being more personal than any other device, hence they tend to store sensitive information such as credit card details, user credentials on these devices. One of the main shortcomings of technology for these devices is security, due to the inherent mobile nature of these devices, the security controls that apply to PC's aren't suitable for these types of devices. Malware targeting mobile devices are very complex, they tend to exploit a number of shortcomings of these devices. We analyze the current security trends for smartphones and propose a location context aware security mechanism, which takes into account the connectivity issues and the limited processing capabilities of mobile devices. A prototype implementation is provided for Android and the results of this implementation is presented.