An Adaptive Encryption Protocol in Mobile Computing

Using encryption for secure communication plays an important role in building applications in mobile computing environments. With the emergence of more and more heterogeneous devices and diverse networks, it is difficult, if not impossible, to use a one-size-fits-all encryption algorithm that always has the best performance in such a dynamic environment. We envision that the only way to accelerate the deployment of encryption algorithms is providing a flexible adaptation of choosing an appropriate encryption algorithm from multiple diverse algorithms according to the characteristics of heterogeneous mobile computing environments. Based on the Fractal framework [1], we propose and implement an adaptive encryption protocol, which can dynamically choose a proper encryption algorithm based on application-specific requirements and device configurations. Performance evaluation results show that in the divergent environment with different devices and applications, the adaptive encryption protocol successfully selects the best encryption algorithm from the candidate algorithms, and minimizes the total time overhead and insures the security as well.