An Adaptive Encryption Protocol in Mobile Computing

Abstract

Use of encryption for secure communication plays an important role inbuilding applications in mobile computing environments. With theemergence of more and more heterogeneous devices and diverse networks,it is difficult, if not impossible, to use a one-size-fits-allencryption algorithm that always has the best performance in such adynamic environment. We envision that the only way to accelerate thedeployment of encryption algorithms is providing a flexible adaptationof choosing an appropriate encryption algorithm from multiple diversealgorithms according to the characteristics of heterogeneous mobilecomputing environments.Based on the Fractal framework {[}1], we propose and implement anadaptive encryption protocol, which can dynamically choose a properencryption algorithm based on application-specific requirements anddevice configurations. Performance evaluation results show that in thedivergent environment with different devices and applications, theadaptive encryption protocol successfully selects the best encryptionalgorithm from the candidate algorithms, and minimizes the total timeoverhead and insures the security as well.