An Individual and Group Authentication Model for Wireless Network Services

Authentication is the most important component to protect information system from unauthorized access. Because mobile devices have resource limitations, current existing authentication methods experience security, efficiency, flexibility and scalability problems in wireless network services. Although many access control methods utilize both individuals and groups while validating authorization, there has been up to date no authentication mechanism supporting both group and individual. To overcome the existing problems, an authentication model for large scale wireless network is proposed in this paper. It provides secure, efficient, flexible and scalable authentication for wireless network users and services. To exhibit the security and efficiency characteristics, a realization of the authentication model using dynamic key cryptography and group key management for individual and group of users and services is also proposed. Its analysis demonstrates the advantages in security, efficiency, flexibility and scalability of both individual and group authentication to existing authentication methods.