Electronic ID: Services and Applications for Context-Aware Integrated Mobile Services

Today smart phones integrate many sensors and provide large computing capacities. They enable the shift towards massive quantities of real-time information becoming access push rather than demand pull on a global case. CAPIM, a platform to support such a paradigm, integrates services to monitor and a context for adapt with the user´s context using sensors and capabilities of smart phones, together with online social data. It integrates context-aware services that are dynamically configurable and use the user´s location, identity, preferences, profile, and relations with individuals, as well as capabilities of the mobile devices to manifest themselves in many different ways and re-invent themselves over and over again. In the following paragraphs we present the design and development details of the security and user identification components to support these services. We propose a secure platform for user authentication and session management, based on public key infrastructure (PKI) services. We analyze its strengths and weaknesses, and present as a case study the particular extension of the platform to support secure user access to restricted areas of a building. We also discuss an analysis of the implementation, cost assessments and problems that might arise, as a methodology to support the construction of such mobile and context-oriented applications.