Security Issues in Mobile eCommerce

Mobile e-commerce enables the mobile user to buy and pay for things, to pay his bill or to make a bet via his mobile phone when on the move, anywhere and at any time. It will bring conveniency and contribute to improve life quality of the users. However, in order to be successful, security measures must be strong enough to protect the user from illegal abuses and to get confidence from him. Unfortunately, current security measures for mobile phones are not yet sufficient. This paper describes the R&D activities in mobile e-commerce at Ericsson, which aim at making mobile e-commerce applications secure and enabling a full scale development and deployment of them. The paper starts with a definition of mobile e-commerce. Next is a summary of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and its achievements. The Web e-commerce is briefly explained. The problems related to security in mobile e-commerce are then described. Thereafter, the solution to the problems is presented. The paper concludes with a look at the future and discussions on what can be done.