Enhancing security in mobile data networks through end user and core network cooperation

Abstract

Smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are quickly becoming a common part of our lives. With the popularity growth of these devices, the amount of mobile malware and other cyber-attacks rises. Many security solutions exist for various mobile platforms, however firewall functionality is missing in the majority of these applications. The reason is lack of network traffic filtration support in the most of modern mobile operating systems. This leaves the end user devices protected only by security infrastructure of the internet service provider. This paper proposes an enhanced security model and architecture, which enables network traffic filtration for devices without support of such feature in the operating system. It requires minimal changes in the existing infrastructure and allows multiple deployment scenarios. The usage of this architecture is not limited to mobile devices only, but can be used also in fixed networks.