Stakeholders' profiles in reconfigurable systems: their importance and security implications

Reconfiguration for seamless mobility has been identified as a key feature of mobile communications beyond 3G. The reconfigurable system in general comprises users, terminals, various radio access schemes, network operators and service providers. A means is required for capturing key stakeholder attributes and also a method for securely sharing those attributes to allow reconfiguration decisions to be made fairly. Identifying a complete list of beneficiaries and their responsibilities and levels of authority within the reconfigurable system will be a major step forward for resolving various issues arising towards the development of this system including the need for standardization, regulation and overall security architecture. This paper introduces new components within the reconfigurable system aimed at addressing these issues, and proposes a preliminary architecture enabling the exchange of profile data between different networks without compromising their security (privacy, integrity, etc).