Protection of Mobile Agent Data

Abstract

One hindrance to the widespread adoption of mobile agent technology is the lack of security. Security will be the issue that has to be addressed carefully if a mobile agent is to be used in the field of electronic commerce. SAFER or Secure Agent Fabrication, Evolution, and Roaming is a mobile agent framework that is specially designed for the purpose of electronic commerce (Zhu, Guan, Yang, & Ko, 2000; Guan & Hua, 2003; Guan, Zhu, & Maung, 2004). Security has been a prime concern from the first day of our research (Guan & Yang, 1999, 2002; Yang & Guan, 2000). By building strong and efficient security mechanisms, SAFER aims to provide a trustworthy framework for mobile agents, increasing trust factors to end users by providing the ability to trust, predictable performance, and a communication channel (Patrick, 2002).