Application commerce: Security challenges and workflows

Application commerce refers to the economics related to the creation and distribution of software applications to the users of a computing platform. The need for a security infrastructure by the Application Programming Interface (API) makers for application commerce is necessitated by i) user privacy and trust concerns for the application, ii) the warranty concerns of the application maker, iii) the concerns from regulatory bodies (Recording Industry, Wireless Regulatory bodies) on content consumption and iv) revenue generation potential for the application maker. In this paper, we outline and compare the security infrastructures of existing API makers. The challenges posed by the security requirements and current solutions are discussed. We also present a workflow for application developers within the constraints set by the application framework provider for ease of development and distribution.