Integrated support for location aware security services in enterprise wireless networks

Abstract

In wireless computing environments limiting network access to authorized users is paramount for the overall security of network. In addition to basic authentication framework, network access is also governed by the context in which it is being used. In this work, we address security issues based on one such context: location. Location sensitivity is increasingly becoming an integral aspect of wireless and pervasive applications. As user moves around in an ubiquitous environment, access rights and other security services provided to her need to be evaluated accordingly. For such purposes we need a security mechanism that controls the authentication and other security services based on location, in addition to basic identity information. In this paper, we present an architecture of location aware security services for enterprise wireless networks. Our implementation is integrated into the RADIUS system, an Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) framework. Performace evaluation shows that our implementation is efficient for location based security services. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2005.