Trusted integration of cloud-based NFC transaction players

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short range wireless technology that provides contactless transmission of data between devices. With an NFC enabled device, users can exchange information from one device to another, make payments and use their NFC enabled device as their identity. As the main payment ecosystem players such as service providers and secure element issuers have crucial roles in a multi-application mobile environment similar to NFC, managing such an environment has become very challenging. One of the technologies that can be used to ensure secure NFC transaction is cloud computing which offers wide range of advantages compare to the use of a Secure Element (SE) as a single entity in an NFC enabled phone. This approach provides a comprehensive leadership of the cloud provider towards managing and controlling customer's information where it allows the SE which is stored within an NFC phone to deal with authentication mechanisms rather than storing and managing sensitive transaction information. This paper discusses the NFC cloud Wallet model which has been proposed by us previously [1] and introduces a different insight that defines a new integrated framework based on a trusted relationship between the vendor and the Mobile Network Operator (MNO). We then carry out an analysis of such a relationship to investigate different possibilities that arise from this approach

Mobile transactions over NFC and GSM

Dynamic relationships between Near Field Communication (NFC) ecosystem players in a monetary transaction make them partners in a way that they sometimes require to share access permission to applications that are running in the service environment. One of the technologies that can be used to ensure secure NFC transactions is cloud computing. This offers a wider range of advantages than the use of only a Secure Element (SE) in an NFC enabled mobile phone. In this paper, we propose a protocol for NFC mobile payments over NFC using Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) authentication. In our protocol, the SE in the mobile device is used for customer authentication whereas the customer's banking credentials are stored in a cloud under the control of the Mobile Network Operator (MNO). The proposed protocol eliminates the requirement for a shared secret between the Point of Sale (PoS) and the MNO before execution of the protocol, a mandatory requirement in the earlier version of this protocol. This elimination makes the protocol more practicable and user friendly. A detailed analysis of the protocol discusses multiple attack scenarios

Managing near field communication (NFC) payment applications through cloud computing

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is a short-range radio communication channel which enables users to exchange data between devices. NFC provides a contactless technology for data transmission between smart phones, Personal Computers (PCs), Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and such devices. It enables the mobile phone to act as identification and a credit card for customers. However, the NFC chip can act as a reader as well as a card, and also be used to design symmetric protocols. Having several parties involved in NFC ecosystem and not having a common standard affects the security of this technology where all the parties are claiming to have access to client’s information (e.g. bank account details). The dynamic relationships of the parties in an NFC transaction process make them partners in a way that sometimes they share their access permissions on the applications that are running in the service environment. These parties can only access their part of involvement as they are not fully aware of each other’s rights and access permissions. The lack of knowledge between involved parties makes the management and ownership of the NFC ecosystem very puzzling. To solve this issue, a security module that is called Secure Element (SE) is designed to be the base of the security for NFC. However, there are still some security issues with SE personalization, management, ownership and architecture that can be exploitable by attackers and delay the adaption of NFC payment technology. Reorganizing and describing what is required for the success of this technology have motivated us to extend the current NFC ecosystem models to accelerate the development of this business area. One of the technologies that can be used to ensure secure NFC transactions is cloud computing which offers wide range advantages compared to the use of SE as a single entity in an NFC enabled mobile phone. We believe cloud computing can solve many issues in regards to NFC application management. Therefore, in the first contribution of part of this thesis we propose a new payment model called “NFC Cloud Wallet". This model demonstrates a reliable structure of an NFC ecosystem which satisfies the requirements of an NFC payment during the development process in a systematic, manageable, and effective way

The survey on Near Field Communication

PubMed ID: 26057043Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging short-range wireless communication technology that offers great and varied promise in services such as payment, ticketing, gaming, crowd sourcing, voting, navigation, and many others. NFC technology enables the integration of services from a wide range of applications into one single smartphone. NFC technology has emerged recently, and consequently not much academic data are available yet, although the number of academic research studies carried out in the past two years has already surpassed the total number of the prior works combined. This paper presents the concept of NFC technology in a holistic approach from different perspectives, including hardware improvement and optimization, communication essentials and standards, applications, secure elements, privacy and security, usability analysis, and ecosystem and business issues. Further research opportunities in terms of the academic and business points of view are also explored and discussed at the end of each section. This comprehensive survey will be a valuable guide for researchers and academicians, as well as for business in the NFC technology and ecosystem.Publisher's Versio

Near Field Communication: Technology and Market Trends

Among the different hi-tech content domains, the telecommunications industry is one of the most relevant, in particular for the Italian economy. Moreover, Near Field Communication (NFC) represents an example of innovative production and a technological introduction in the telecommunications context. It has a threefold function: card emulator, peer-to-peer communication and digital content access, and it could be pervasively integrated in many different domains, especially in the mobile payment one. The increasing attention on NFC technology from the academic community has improved an analysis on the changes and the development perspective about mobile payments. It has considered the work done by the GSMA (Global System for Mobile Communications Association) and the NFC Forum in recent years. This study starts from an analysis of the scientific contributions to Near Field Communication and how the main researches on this topic were conceived. Our focus is on the diffusion rates, the adoption rates and the technology life cycle. After that, we analyze the technical-economical elements of NFC. Finally, this work presents the state of art of the improvements to this technology with a deeper focus on NFC technologies applied to the tourism industry. In this way, we have done a case analysis that shows some of the NFC existent applications linked to each stage of the tourism value chain

What is the role of mobile operators in the mobile payments ecosystem?

CEM

What is the role of mobile operators in the mobile payments ecosystem?

CEM

Moving forward: Emerging themes in financial services technologies’ adoption

© 2015 by the Association for Information Systems. Financial services technologies (FST) are core to the continuous transformation of financial services organizations (FSO). To date, however, there has been a lack of empirical research into FST adoption against the backdrop of the recent financial crisis. In this paper, we re-examine how FSO are currently positioned to take advantage of emerging FST. Note that, in this paper, we look forward rather than provide a commentary on the state of the art in technology adoption research. We conducted this research by applying an exploratory qualitative study method: we analyzed interview transcripts from thirty recent interviews of FSO technology executives and CIOs by using a thematic network analysis tool. This analysis uncovered nineteen basic, eight organizing, and two global FST adoption research themes along with their links to FST adoption objectives, challenges, customer centricity, human resources, outsourcing, and overall IT strategy maintenance. This research has both practical and theoretical research implications and serves as a resource base for FSO and researchers to set future research priorities and directions. We intend for the emerging themes that we present in this paper to facilitate research directions by shedding light on the areas of greatest value and potential return in FST adoption

TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2009

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month