JR Centre for User-friendly Secure Mobile Environments

The potential is great: credit cards, customer cards, ID cards and the front door key could be replaced by mobile services (e.g. smartphones and tablet PCs). The research work is focussing on the security and user-friendliness of such applications.

Many of the services for mobile devices currently offer little or no security for users. If there are security precautions, this often reduces user-friendliness: a simple password is easier to remember and therefore more user-friendly than a complicated and more secure one; an iris scan for every purchase would be very secure, but not very user-friendly. The easiest way to use a device would be if there were no security precautions at all. One of the aims of the research work is to find a balance between user-friendliness and security.

One of the big questions is security after the smartphone is lost or stolen: how can it be ensured that only the owner can really pay at the supermarket checkout or open the front door?

Here, the researchers are relying on tried and tested methods: smartcards (such as credit cards, e-cards or key cards) are integrated into the smartphone's hardware and software in such a way that only the owners can use their positions, whether by fingerprint or password.

The second research topic is secure user interfaces: How does the ATM know what to do with the smartphone? How can different software solutions from different providers (e.g. banks) be integrated on a smartphone?

The centre's research work is primarily carried out on computers: Various methods and protocols are developed for mobile devices. These are used in research prototypes that can be used to test the effects of the new methods on users. The results of this evaluation flow back into new developments and new prototypes in an iterative process.

The results of the research work should ultimately not only prepare the ground for the development of new products and services, but also contribute to the establishment of globally recognised standards for secure, interoperable mobile services.