Anna Kamunen has had a career in Software Engineering for 4 years and is currently a Scrum Master at the Tampere-based software company Insta DefSec Oy, where she works on public safety projects. Anna has professional interests in service management, quality management and agile software development. She is studying for a Master’s Degree at the School of Information Sciences in the University of Tampere.
Ville Pylkki studies in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tampere. His main interests include the implementation activities in software development, i18n and l10n (internationalization and localization), and automatic code generation.
Security and Open Source Mobile Applications
Anna Kamunen1, Ville Pylkki2
- 1Public Safety & Security, Insta DefSec Oy P.O. Box 80 (Sarankulmankatu 20), 33901 TAMPERE anna.kamunen@insta.fi
- 2School of Information Sciences, University of Tampere, ville.pylkki@uta.fi
Abstract
Security is a quality factor of growing importance. An increasing number of people submit their personal information, manage bank accounts and work online using mobile devices. As smartphones with functionalities to perform all these tasks are getting increasingly popular, the need for mobile security practices becomes more urgent.
Research concerning the general security of open source applications when compared against closed source applications is available, but there seems to be very little research considering the security of open source mobile applications and operating systems. We have read some of the research in order to identify the important factors in open source mobile security. In this paper we also evaluate the practices of some open source mobile application frameworks in order to find out how the development method affects security. This paper aims to find out the quality of security documentation and security features of existing open source mobile frameworks.
There seems to be little evidence to declare either open source or proprietary software more secure than the other. The practices of developers and security feature designs play a larger role. While some open source mobile frameworks document and implement security features well, others are more interested in adding more visible features to attract more users. More research needs to be done to identify the necessary steps to improve mobile security, and to determine whether to use open source and closed source systems in a given situation.