Beyond Fixed Key Size: Classifications Toward a Balance Between Security and Performance

The inherent limitations of mobile devices (MD) increase the gap between security and performance, and this gap increases with the growing heterogeneity of computing environments. As we are moving to the 4G network and Mobile Internet, there will be a need to deliver an intelligence tradeoff between security and performance. The main aim of this paper is to identify challenges in MD research and to propose practical solution to maintain the balance between efficiency and protection to secure mobile communication. We propose a Dynamic Key Size (DKS) architecture which can be integrated into security protocols to provide an efficient and secure mobile communication. Applications are provided with an interface for selectively securing information at different levels of protection. Our architecture makes use of both the information sensitivity and MD capabilities performance levels classifications in making a decision for suitable algorithm key length. As a possible application, we outline the integration of DKS over SSL protocol to demonstrate the flexibility features that improves the protocol security performance.