Security management for ad-hoc networked resource-limited mobile devices

Each phase of spontaneous networking (activation of devices, device discovery, setup of secure communication channels, identification of discovered devices as well as service discovery and usage) has specific security requirements. Existing security technologies concentrate only on partial security aspects of spontaneous networking; however, this results in security gaps because, due to dependencies among them, handling security in each phase separately cannot guarantee security for the entire system in a highly dynamic, decentralised and mobile environment. We propose a new integrated security architecture for spontaneously networked mobile devices; it controls security in all mentioned phases and extends existing concepts for these phases (where necessary) with additional security mechanisms. Our architecture consists of six security managers, which allow secure activation of the mobile device based on a trusted device and biometry, anonymous communication peer discovery, secure communication setup, identification of communication peers, secure service discovery and usage as well as risk monitoring.