Authentication in the clouds: a framework and its application to mobile users

The cloud computing paradigm is a natural fit for mobile security. Typical handsets have input constraints and practical battery limitations, which must be respected by mobile security technologies in order to be effective. We describe a framework for supporting authentication decisions based on a flexible authentication framework we call TrustCube (to manage the authentication infrastructure) and on a behavioral authentication approach referred to as Implicit Authentication (to translate user behavior into authentication scores.) The combination results in a new authentication paradigm for effortless and power-aware authentication of users of mobile technologies and promises improvements in user privacy.