Use biometrics for identity management of cloud users to enhanced the security in mobile cloud computing

1. Use Biometrics for Identity
Management of Cloud Users to
Enhanced the Security in Mobile
Cloud Computing
Presented By:
Vineet Garg, Research Scholar,
Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar

2. Introduction
Cloud computing is one of the emerging market and its goes big by the
period of time. According to the Bloomberg survey the cloud computing
will earn around $ 270 billion in 2020. Due to the advantages such as
flexibility, mobility, and costs saving, the number of cloud users is
expected to grow rapidly. Recent advances in cloud computing have given
a platform to various computationally heavy tasks and made them readily
accessible to even mobile devices. Cloud service providers provides
number of type of services to all type of users whether it is a organizations
that want to store its critical data on the cloud or a programmer those
want to execute their application on the cloud and want to store the
application on the cloud or it can be a person want to store its
songs/games on the cloud server and want excess of those things
anywhere in the world. The users of the cloud are growing and it will grow
in the near future due to the customize services provided by the cloud
service providers. As the users of cloud services grow the need of more
secured access of cloud is also required.

3. Most of the cloud service providers use
different types of identity management for
users to safely access their cloud. Some of the
Identity Management way for users of the
cloud [2]:
• Username/Password
• Device Identifier
• Application Identifier
• Public/Private Key Infrastructure Certificate

4. All the above said identity management
techniques use username/password as the
combination as these techniques can
recognized the user of the cloud only by the
username/password. Due to this organizations
need a secure way to authenticate its users in
order to ensure the functionality of their
services and data stored in the cloud storages
are managed in a private environment[3].

5. • To make access authentication more secured
biometrics authentication can be used as they give
unique identification of any user and there is no
need for user to remained there username/
passwords.
• To make biometric one of the identity management
for accessing cloud user need a device that can
capture the biometric of human and also some
mechanism that cloud service provider use to store
the biometric on cloud and verify it whenever a
user want to access the cloud. As biometrics
become one of the most secured way to access
anything on internet ,number of manufactures
provides inbuilt sensors in there devices.

6. The given figure shows how this can be done suing the smart
phones.

7. Issues with Biometrics to be used
with mobile phones to access the
cloud:
• Biometric Device on Smart Phones
• Where the biometric image to be stored
• How to secure biometric image
• Type of Biometric Sensing method to be used
on Smart phones
• Type of Operating System being used on Smart
phones

8. • Biometric Device on Smart Phones:
As we know the problem with using the biometric security
are the devices that being used for getting the image of
users biometric. These days number of devices are in the
market that can be used for get this thing possible and
there also number of sensors in the market that can
embedded in any device for capturing the image of
biometric. Smart phones are still going to adopt such type
of sensors. In Sept, 2013 the top manufacture of mobiles
Apple introduce the fingerprint scanner in iPhone 5c that
increase the possibility for more mobiles phone in the
market with fingerprint scanner[5]. The top manufacture
such as Samsung, Sony, LG, and HTC already announced
they are going to use fingerprint sensor in their upcoming
mobile phones. As the devices increase in the market with
incorporation of finger print scanner it become easy for
user to adopt biometric for security on clouds.

9. • Where the biometric image to be stored:
Biometric device generally capture the image of any biometric of the
human. These days’ sensors are used to get such type of image. In
backend these images are converted in to the graph and the graph
are converted into the unique PIN that being used in data base for
future reference. If the image is already captured with the biometric
sensors then the image is captured, converted in to the graph and in
PIN this PIN is compared with the stored PIN of user if it is matched
then the user allowed to access. If we use biometric of human for
accessing the cloud then where this image have to stored. If we
store such image on the cloud then the image captured by mobile
have to be transferred to cloud service provider when the graph and
PIN generation is performed for matching, then we need high speed
internet service for transferring such image to cloud and also need a
secured protocol that can transfer the image to the cloud service
provider. If we opt for storing image on mobile then we have to find
a mechanism to store the unique PIN generated on the mobile
phone to be stored on the cloud for future reference.

10. • How to secure biometric image:
As per the above point biometric image can be stored
on mobile or on cloud depending on the method being
used by the cloud service provider. In both of the
situation there are some issues that have to be resolve
such as what type of sensing method is to be used for
converting the biometric image into graph or in PIN on
the cloud and how it will work with different type of
sensors that are embedded on the smart phones, being
used for capturing images. If PIN is generated on the
mobile how the cloud service provider will judge
whether the PIN is generated by the mobile phone
after capturing the biometric image of the human or it
can be a PIN generated by a program that is executed
on the internet.

11. • Type of Biometric Sensing method to be used
on Smart phones:
There are number of type of biometric sensing method can be
used for capturing the image of the human biometric.
Different sensors may output images that exhibit variations in
resolution, size, distortion, contrast, background noise, and so
on. Different encoders may extract different features or adopt
varying definitions of the same feature. This diversity makes it
difficult to build a fingerprint system with principal
components sourced from different vendors[6].
Figure-2: Optical Sensor, Thermal Sensor, Solid State Sensors

12. • Type of Operating System being used on Smart
phones[7]:
Following are some of the latest operating system
being used in smart phones. The Application used
for capturing image is permanent storage of the
smart phone have to be installed on these
operating systems.
1)Android
2)BlackBerry
3)iOS
4)Windows Phone
5)Firefox OS
etc..

13. Purposed Architecture that can incorporate
Biometric thumb impression for accessing the
Cloud Server:

14. • Operating System incorporate at least one
application of biometric with specific sensor
• Security concern biometric image captured by
sensors have to be store on the cloud.
• Whenever User wants to access its cloud,
cloud service provider first identify the
operating environment installed on the smart
phone and transfers it to dedicated cloud
server

15. Conclusion
• Cloud computing is the concept of working with your
data/application anywhere in the world; you just needed a
computer and an internet connection. Smart phones are
one of the best alternatives of personal computers with the
internet connection that can be easily carried by user.
Smart phone market is growing and it set to grow in near
future, According to a recent research, a New York- based
firm, study that more than 240 million businesses will use
cloud services through mobile devices by 2015. That
traction will push the revenue of mobile cloud computing
to $5.2 billion. With this perspective we had tried to discuss
security of the data/application on the cloud of the user
that is the one of the major issues related to smart phones
and tried to give our own opinion to resolve this issue.

16. Regards
Vineet Garg, Asst. Professor,MCA
PhD(Pursuing)
grvineet1@gmail.com
989114021