www.tjprc.org editor@tjprc.org International Journal of Applied Engineering Research and Development (IJAERD) ISSN(P): 2250-1584; ISSN(E): 2278-9383 Vol. 4, Issue 2, Apr 2014, 49-56 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd. SECURITY MECHANISMS FOR SMARTPHONES: SURVEY DIKSHA KALE 1 , VIJAY BHOSALE 2 & SUDHIR SAWARKAR 3 1 Department of Computer M. E, MGM College of Engineering and Technology, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India 2 Department of Computer, MGM College of Engineering and Technology, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India 3 Department of Computer, Datta Meghe College of Engineering, Maharashtra, India ABSTRACT Smartphones has emerged as most popular gadget nowadays. Smartphones provide most of functionalities of personal computers and also has developing features and applications based on internet, due to which smartphones becomes more vulnerable to security threats such as virus, worm, Trojans etc. Smartphones are constrained by storage, battery, processing so it is difficult to implement high security services on the smartphone itself. Another new technology gaining attraction today is cloud computing providing better resource utilization and improved scalability. This paper proposes a review on examining different existing architectures providing security for Smartphones. KEYWORDS: Android, Cloud Computing, Security Mechanisms, Smart Phones, Threats INTRODUCTION Smartphones Today, Smartphones are most popular communication devices. They come with a feature such as web browsing capability, facility to download and run software application from internet. They come with high processing power, bigger screen size and extra storage as compared to traditional mobile phones. As architecture of such devices are much similar to traditional personal computers in terms of functionality as well as performance, common security threats like worms, Trojans and viruses are also affecting smart phones. Most of the attackers, targets Smartphones because various new applications are continuously being developed for the smartphones that are easily available and can be downloaded from internet, through which attackers can inject malicious code into smartphones. To protect from such threats some security algorithms required that used to secure desktop-PC. But these algorithms are highly complex and resource consuming, and can’t be executed on Smartphones as they have power, computational and storage limitations. Another problem is inconsistency in software support and security fixes by the manufacturer of smartphone device. If bug fixes and patches are not provided by manufacturers to customers then security of smartphone would be highly compromised and make them vulnerable to attack. Most of Security check algorithms are proposed on signature based behavior detection, where database of signatures need to be updated frequently and also has huge database size. So implementing such detection techniques on smartphones is very difficult and expensive. Cloud Computing A new computing prototype which gives hosted services by sharing resources which are accessible over internet