A Flexible Authorization Mechanism for Enterprise Networks Using Smart-Phone Devices

The authentication and authorization process is a critical factor in Wi-Fi enterprise networks, being the mechanism used to give access to the network resources. The general Wi-Fi enterprise network security frameworks have a static structure, being based on user-name/password credentials and without offering a flexible granular access. Nowadays, smart-phones devices are becoming ubiquitous and these can be used as security elements due to their hardware/software capabilities. Smart-phones have the capability to execute complex cryptographic operations and have the hardware peripherals, which allow authenticating the user. In this paper, we propose a smart-phone centric authentication and authorization solution which employs a bootstrap security protocols to provision temporary credentials for a WPA2 Enterprise protected Wi-Fi network.