Mobile group to establish security standards for mobile web

Until recently, the development of mobile-friendly websites has been regarded as nothing more than an irrelevant black art. That has since changed, thanks to more web-capable phones making their way into the mainstream (such as, of course, the iPhone). But the landslide of new and improved mobile sites has opened the doors to a sort of standard-free chaos, where almost anything (that works) goes and security is a second thought. The Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) group hopes to change that, however, by launching a new initiative that focuses on mobile development without sacrificing important principles like security.

The project will be called BONDI and will be supported by a number of OMTP members: 3 Group, AT&T, T-Mobile, Telenor, Telefónica, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone. The group plans to "harmonize the various open and proprietary ongoing initiatives and this cooperative work will minimise the potential for technology fragmentation," and will provide a secure web services interface for developers to use when creating mobile sites. "The new handset software will be engineered in such a way as to prevent fraudulent and malicious activity through unauthorized access to functions or sensitive personal information," says OMTP.

The group says that the end goal is to ensure that users can feel secure when surfing the mobile web and know that their privacy is being protected. Although not much attention has been paid to security on mobile sites in the past, such sites cannot continue to flourish until developers begin to take them as seriously as they do sites that are accessible on the PC. BONDI's members hope that, with their set of draft specifications and reference implementation, they'll be able to provide a foundation from which web developers can continue to innovate without sacrificing what's important.

Of course, BONDI's standards won't make any difference in the mobile web world unless developers start actually using them en masse. This, in itself, can be a major undertaking, given the huge amount of developers out there who all want to do things their own way. However, the age of mobile websites is still relatively young, so BONDI may have some chance at making an impact on how secure they are in the future.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080702-mobile-group-to-establish-security-standards-for-mobile-web.html