Feasibility of Implementing Multi-factor Authentication Schemes in Mobile Cloud Computing

Mobile cloud computing is a new computing technology, which provides on-demand resources. Nowadays, this computing paradigm is becoming one the most interesting technology for IT enterprises. The idea of computing and offloading data in cloud computing is utilized to overcome the inherent challenges in mobile computing. This is carried out by utilizing other resource providers besides the mobile device to host the delivery of mobile applications. However, this technology introduces some opportunities as new computing concept, several challenges, including security and privacy are raised from the adoption of this IT paradigm. Authentication plays an important role to mitigate security and privacy issue in the mobile cloud computing. Even some authentication algorithms are proposed for mobile cloud computing, but most of these algorithms designed for traditional computing models, and are not using cloud capabilities. In mobile cloud computing, we access to pooled computation resources and applying more complicated authentication schemes is possible. Using different authentication factors, which is called multi-factor authentication algorithms, has been proposed for various areas. In this paper, feasibility of implementation of different kinds of multi-factor authentication protocols are discussed. Furthermore, the security and privacy of these algorithms are analyzed. Finally, some future directions are recommended.