Mobile cloud computing provides an opportunity to restrict the usage of huge hardware infrastructure and to provide access to data, applications, and computational power from every place and in any time with the use of a mobile device. Furthermore, MCC offers a number of possibilities but additionally creates several challenges and issues that need to be addressed as well. Through this work, the authors try to define the most important issues and challenges in the field of MCC technology by illustrating the most significant works related to MCC during recent years. Regarding the huge benefits offered by the MCC technology, the authors try to achieve a more safe and trusted environment for MCC users in order to operate the functions and transfer, edit, and manage data and applications, proposing a new method based on the existing AES encryption algorithm, which is, according to the study, the most relevant encryption algorithm to a cloud environment. Concluding, the authors suggest as a future plan to focus on finding new ways to achieve a better integration MCC with other technologies.
TopIntroduction
The need of “cloud” support has become inefficient due to the intensive computations, the mass storage, and the security issues. Some examples include limited storage capacity, communication capabilities, energy and processing. Inefficiencies like these have motivated us in order to find a model for the combination of CC and other technologies such as Internet of Things and Big Data. As a “base” technology, Cloud Computing consolidates various technologies and applications to get the maximum capacity and performance of the existing infrastructure (Kryftis et al., 2016; Stergiou & Psannis, 2016; Stergiou et al., 2018b).
Mobile Cloud Computing improved through the recent years by a new generation of services based on the concept of the “cloud computing”, which aims to provide access to the information and the data from anywhere at any time, and simultaneously restrict or eliminate the need for hardware equipment (Rahimi et al., 2014; Stergiou & Psannis, 2016; Stergiou & Psannis, 2017b; Stergiou et al., 2018f). In particular, Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) could be defined as an integration of Cloud Computing (CC) technology and mobile devices in order to make mobile devices resourceful in terms of computational power, memory, storage, energy, and context awareness (Fremdt et al., 2013; Keskin & Taskin, 2014; Haung, 2011; Stergiou et al., 2018c). As a result of the operations of Cloud Computing, it could be used as useful base for several technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data (BD) and Surveillance Systems, and could provide improvements on their functions.
Therefore, the term mobile cloud is generally referred to in two perspectives: (a) infrastructure based, and (b) ad-hoc mobile cloud. In infrastructure based mobile cloud, the hardware infrastructure remains static, and provides services to the mobile users. Although cloud is useful for computing and storage (Rahimi et al., 2014; Stergiou & Psannis, 2017a; Stergiou et al., 2018d), the traditional computation offloading techniques cannot be used directly for smartphones because these techniques are generally energy-unaware and “bandwidthhungry”.
Furthermore, the term “cloud computation” is defined as “the use of computing logistical resources by using services transported over the internet” (Stergiou & Psannis, 2016; Stergiou & Psannis, 2017b). Nowadays, Cloud Computing services constitute one of the world's largest areas of competition between giant companies in the IT sector and software (Mell & Grance, 2011). However, Cloud Computing security is an evolving sub-domain of computer security, network security, and, more broadly, information security. It refers to a broad set of policies, technologies, and controls deployed to protect data, applications, and the associated infrastructure of cloud computing (Rahimi et al., 2014; Mell & Grance, 2011; Haghighat, 2015). Thus, as the MCC is the outcome of CC it faced the same security and privacy challenges and issues.