Towards improving the security of mobile systems using virtualization and isolation

Abstract

Mobile devices are used for various activities ranging from entertainment to banking. Bring Your Own Devices (BYODs) and telecommuting allow employees to use their mobile devices in the environment of an organization and at home. The convergence of work and personal life introduces several security and privacy problems. This paper presents a technical approach to balance security and privacy needs of the employees and the organization as well as to reduce the risks associated with the BYODs and the telecommuting. The fundamental building block of the technical approach is virtualization. This paper presents an incremental mobile virtual machine operating system design and implements the first phase of the design by using the Xen hypervisor and a smartphone-like development board.