Report: GlobalPlatform’s vision for a ‘consumer centric’ mobile services ecosystem
05 March, 2012
category: NFC
GlobalPlatform, the organization that standardizes the management of applications on secure chip technology, has published a new white paper detailing its vision to create a “consumer centric” ecosystem in which the consumer have ultimate control over which secure applications they want to use on their device.
The white paper, “A New Model: The Consumer-Centric Model and How it Applies to the Mobile Ecosystem,” argues that when the consumer is placed at the center of the secure application ecosystem, consideration must be given to ensure appropriate levels of security – e.g. low level security for loyalty or gaming apps to highest possible security for mobile payments and identity.
To address this, GlobalPlatform promotes the need for a trusted token – a secure chip-based object owned by the consumer that adopts the role of a personal security container. Such tokens will be supplied by trusted token providers – entities that can provide security assurances – enabling a service provider to verify the security of a consumer’s token or tokens.
“It is becoming increasingly evident that the consumer centric model is inevitable as consumers become more comfortable with downloading applications onto their devices and are requiring more and more protection of their private data and value added services,” said Gil Bernabeu, technical director of GlobalPlatform. “To ensure widespread adoption, however, it is important that the model evolves in a standardized manner and that the industry collaborates to develop a secure and fully interoperable landscape.”
GlobalPlatform’s paper goes on to outline a road map to support this model and how a verifiable level of security can be delivered for both low and highly-sensitive applications. For its part, GlobalPlatform says it will need to define an open and scalable infrastructure that encourages the proliferation of supplier agnostic standards-based technology.
Download the free paper here.