Mobile computing devices and the services offered by them are utilized by millions of users on a daily basis. However, they operate in hostile environments getting exposed to a wide variety of threats. Accordingly, vulnerability management mechanisms are highly required. We present in this paper a novel approach for increasing the security of mobile devices by efficiently detecting vulnerable configurations. In that context, we propose a modeling for performing vulnerability assessment activities as well as an OVAL-based distributed framework for ensuring safe configurations within the Android platform. We also describe an implementation prototype and evaluate its performance through an extensive set of experiments.3 Malicious software including virus, worms and spyware among others 4 Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language

In order to prevent attacks against smartphones and tablets, dedicated security applications are deployed on the mobile devices themselves. However, these applications may have a significant impact on the device resources. Users may be tempted to uninstall or disable them with the objective of increasing battery lifetime and avoiding configuration operations and updates. In this paper, we propose a new approach for outsourcing mobile security functions as cloud-based services. The outsourced functions are dynamically activated, configured and composed using software-defined networking and virtualization capabilities. We detail also preliminary results and point out future research efforts.