Common Platform for Mobile Security
A coalition of government, industry and research organizations in Japan has proposed the adoption of a common platform based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) authentication for higher security on mobile-phone networks, bypassing ID- and password-based security. The group announced that it has developed the technology with the aim of providing a common platform for secure mobile-phone communications in Japan. The group comprises the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), the mobile IT Forum (mITF), Hitachi, NTT Docomo, KDDI R&D Laboratories and NEC. Hitachi, Docomo, KDDI and NEC have been working for three years to develop the mobile-security technology, funded with about $5 million from NICT.
mITF’s announcement [.PDF in Japanese] is available Here.
All three major carriers in Japan have been members of mITF. If the common PKI platform succeeds, people will eventually use mobile phones for identification, said Yutaka Yasuda, general manager of the corporate technology sector, who is acting as the chairman of the Mobile Commerce Committee of the mobile IT Forum.
With the aim of spreading its technology to other areas of the world, the group also intends to bring its approach before such standards-making bodies as the International Telecommunication Union and the Open Mobile Alliance. Now that the six research members have developed the basic platform, they intend to use the demonstration to broaden discussions of operational details and privacy protection. Via: EE Times