With the trend of having data stored in the cloud and continuously increasing bandwidths, the idea of a mobile phone being an individual device is no longer necessary. SecurePhone research project, funded partly by the European Commission’s Framework Program 6, aims to change the way people interact and make business. SecurePhone is expected to improve trust and confidence in new technologies by masking high-tech functionalities under the reassuring interface of a smartphone.
SecurePhone delivers a new scenario for m-business and m-work by offering the union between biometrics and electronic signatures. It grants strong authentication anywhere (to access databases, deal transactions, business operations) and simultaneously assures necessary security.
The system offers three methods of biometric identification. One employs the digital cameras that have become common place in mobile devices along with a face recognition application to identify the user based on their facial features. Another uses voice recognition software – also detecting any asynchrony between speech and lip movements - and the third verifies the handwritten signature of the user on the device’s touch screen. The three methods are used in combination to enhance the overall levels of security and reliability, and most importantly they require no hardware additions to mobile devices.
The SecurePhone will provide users with a number of innovative functionalities, such as the possibility to securely authenticate themselves by means of a “biometric recogniser”, mutually recognise each other in initiating a phone call, exchange and modify in real time audio and/or text files and eventually e-sign, deal m-contracts during a mobile phone call and securely transmit significant parts of their phone conversation.
