Mobile Wireless Security
A Solution for Mobile Wireless Security
The emergence of wireless and mobile networks has made possible the introduction of electronic commerce to a new application and research area: mobile commerce. Understanding or applying mobile commerce is an arduous task because it involves a wide variety of disciplines and technologies. To facilitate understanding and applying mobile commerce, this article gives careful study to four major subjects of mobile commerce: i) mobile commerce systems from a technical perspective, ii) mobile hand held devices including smart cellular phones and PDAs, iii) hand held computing including client-and server-side hand held programming, and iv) mobile commerce payment methods. Each subject will be described in detail and major technologies for the subject will be given too.
Introduction
With the introduction of the World Wide Web, electronic commerce has revolutionized traditional commerce and boosted sales and exchanges of merchandise and information. Mobile commerce is defined as the exchange or buying and selling of commodities, services, or information on the Internet through the use of mobile hand held devices. In just a few years, mobile commerce has emerged from nowhere to become the hottest new trend in business transactions. Despite a weak economy, the future of mobile commerce is bright according to the latest predictions (Juniper Research Ltd, 2004). However, it requires a tremendous effort to understand mobile commerce and construct a mobile commerce application because mobile commerce involves such a wide range of disciplines and technologies. To lessen the difficulty, this paper gives careful study to four major subjects of mobile commerce:
Mobile commerce systems: Various system structures for mobile commerce have been proposed. A typical mobile commerce system generally consists of six components: i) mobile commerce applications, ii) mobile handheld devices, iii) mobile middleware, iv) wireless networks, v) wired networks, and vi) host computers.
Mobile handheld devices: Handheld devices provide the equipment mobile users need to interact with mobile commerce applications. A mobile handheld device includes six major components: i) a mobile operating system, ii) a mobile central processor unit, iii) a micro browser, iv) input/output devices, v) a memory, and vi) batteries.
Handheld computing: Handheld computing is the future of computer science because 650 million smart cellular phones, not including PDAs (personal digital assistants), will be used by 2006 (InfoTech Trends, 2002). Handheld computing is the programming for handheld devices and it includes two kinds: client-and server-side handheld programming.
Mobile payment methods: Mobile commerce security is defined as the technological and managerial procedures applied to mobile commerce to provide security properties. Among the many issues that arise with mobile commerce security, mobile payment methods, including macro payments and micro payments, are probably the most important.
Mobile Commerce Systems
A mobile commerce system is inherently interdisciplinary and could be implemented in various ways. Figure 1 shows a flowchart of how a user request is processed by a mobile commerce system.
Figure 1: A flowchart of a user request processed in a mobile commerce system
Figure 1: A flowchart of a user request processed in a mobile commerce system
Figure 2 shows the structure of a mobile commerce system and a typical example of such a system (Hu, Lee, & Yeh, 2004). The system structure includes six components: i) mobile applications, ii) mobile handheld devices, iii) mobile middleware, iv) wireless networks, v) wired networks, and vi) host computers. Related research on mobile commerce systems can be found in the article by Varshney, Vetter, & Kalakota (2000).
An MC System Structure A Typical Implementation
Recent Trend at Mobile Wireless Security in Information Security