E-health Services with Secure Mobile Agent

This paper established a new security mechanism for online communications using mobile agents.  E-health has been widely used as a communication system and information changes to deliver health services to the users through the Internet.  However, the Internet imposes threats that will risk the information in transit. Therefore it is important to ensure that the communication is safe and the user’s privacy is protected.  This paper extends our previous research results, Multilayer Communication (MLC) approach [1], and introduced mobile agents to MLC in e-health.  The cryptographic protocols such as encryption/decryption, digital signature, and hash code are used as protection mechanisms.  We focus on how Sender can securely transfer sensitive information to Recipient while still maintaining control over it.  Sender keeps the key for decryption at his/her side until the agent needs it.  A token is carried by the agent, which is used as a mean to call home platform to obtain the key for decryption processes.  The significant of this new mechanism is that it gives Sender control over the transmitted data.  Recipient can also avoid burden with the encryption details as long as he/she knows that the message is indeed comes from Recipient.