Context Based Smart Access Control on BYOD Environments

Abstract

Recent mobile communication developments and the penetration of smartphones are spurring the increase of the number of smart devices owned by individuals. Mobile devices, because of the multitude of services they provide other than simple communication have become deeply rooted into each individual’s life. This development has spread into the work environment spawning a new trend commonly known as BYOD (bring your own device). However, with this trend serious security issues are emerging as a diversity of personal devices with unreliable security are increasingly accessing the typically closed intranets of conventional work environments. Corporations want to improve their productivity by taking advantage of the benefits of BYOD but it is difficult to handle an open BYOD work environment with current security technologies. This study analyzes the characteristics of BYOD environments, current threats to security and required security technologies, and presents a security framework suitable for BYOD environments. The framework presented here can manage a variety of devices despite their disparate operating systems and also control network factors according to the nature of the habits of BYOD users. As it is not based on IP or port-based analysis, which had been primarily used in the past, but on high quality, context information.