Content authentication in enterprises for mobile devices

Most recent work in enterprise security has targeted the area of securing systems and networks from external hackers. We present new security challenges that arise in such networks from a mobile workforce. We argue that future threats to the network will likely come from inside the network; specifically, from legitimate devices and users that roam and reconnect to the enterprise. Fundamentally, most current and past work tackles the issue of authenticating a user or a machine (its hardware) before allowing access to enterprise resources. However, we expect that the critical issue going forward will be to authenticate the content of a device and ensure that the content is in-line with the enterprise's security polices. In this paper, we present a framework for authenticating the contents of devices connecting to an enterprise and also propose a new token-based scheme for indirect content authentication.