Policy-based Security Assessment of Mobile End-user Devices - An Alternative to Mobile Device Management Solutions for Android Smartphones

Thomas Zefferer, Peter Teufl

2013

Abstract

For security-critical applications, the integrity and security of end-user devices is of particular importance. This especially applies to mobile applications that use smartphones to process security-critical data. Unfortunately, users often compromise the security of smartphones by disabling security features for convenience reasons or by unintentionally installing malware from untrusted application sources. Mobile device management (MDM) solutions overcome this problem by providing means to centrally manage and configure smartphones. However, MDM is mainly suitable for corporate environments but often cannot be applied in non-corporate fields of application such as m-banking or m-government. To address this problem, we propose an alternative approach to assure the security and integrity of smartphones. Our approach relies on a device assessor that evaluates the current state of a smartphone according to a security policy. Integration of this device assessor allows smartphone applications to condition the processing of security-critical data on the smartphone’s compliance with a defined security policy. We have shown the practicability of the proposed approach by means of a concrete implementation for the Android platform. We have evaluated this implementation on different Android devices. Obtained results show that our approach constitutes an appropriate alternative for scenarios, in which MDM cannot be applied.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Zefferer T. and Teufl P. (2013). Policy-based Security Assessment of Mobile End-user Devices - An Alternative to Mobile Device Management Solutions for Android Smartphones . In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2013) ISBN 978-989-8565-73-0, pages 347-354. DOI: 10.5220/0004509903470354

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt13,
author={Thomas Zefferer and Peter Teufl},
title={Policy-based Security Assessment of Mobile End-user Devices - An Alternative to Mobile Device Management Solutions for Android Smartphones},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2013)},
year={2013},
pages={347-354},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004509903470354},
isbn={978-989-8565-73-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2013)
TI - Policy-based Security Assessment of Mobile End-user Devices - An Alternative to Mobile Device Management Solutions for Android Smartphones
SN - 978-989-8565-73-0
AU - Zefferer T.
AU - Teufl P.
PY - 2013
SP - 347
EP - 354
DO - 10.5220/0004509903470354