QED: Securing the Mobile Masses

The growing trend of nomadic and mobile computing raises serious security concerns. Nomadicity has become common; users are in constant transit, migrating with their mobile devices through many diverse wireless environments. Some users are innocent—potentially vulnerable, but benign—while others are malicious or carry compromised devices. The mobile commons brings all of these users and devices together. Both clients and hosting environments must be protected. To that end, we are developing QED, a new security model for computer networks. QED enables environments to quarantine devices, examine them, and potentially update or “decontaminate” client nodes. We present the design of our QED prototype and evaluate its performance in our laboratory.