New Security Issues in Mobile E-Commerce

By 2004, there is expected to be over 1 billion wireless device sub-scribers. The future of e-commerce appears to be headed straight for mobile e-commerce (m-commerce). Today’s workers want to be un-tethered from their desktops with the freedom to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime. To this end, current wireless platforms are integrating voice telephony, data, and streaming multimedia in multifunction rich-content capable devices. In the future, code will be exchanged transparently with data over wireless links. Wireless devices will have the processing power and memory of today’s desktop workstations. Wireless devices will have direct connections to file servers and network services behind the corporate firewalls. Furthermore, wireless devices will have the ability to ship and execute mobile and itinerant code such as software agents that act on the user’s behalf. The security and privacy concerns are paramount for consumers and businesses. In this chapter, we describe the key security concerns in mobile e-commerce and avenues for addressing them.