Finding the Mobile Trusted Element

Abstract

Nowadays a number of services and applications delivered on mobile terminals need to be secured in order to guarantee the user privacy, the business stakeholders and the commercial and legal issues related to security threads.

Nevertheless, mobile terminals available on the market cannot be considered trusted in wide sense, since they do not meet the stringent security paradigms that, for instance, smart card based applications development and deployment require.

Locating key security elements inside mobile terminals becomes a most peculiar issue to deliver new applications which focus on the identification, authentication and protection of users and/or service delivery related to third parties information.

This paper highlights the security issues on mobile terminals, considering primarily Telecom Italia use cases and business experience, emphasizing the importance to identify the mobile trusted elements and stakeholders in the security management within mobile handsets.