Toward Secure Resource Allocation in Mobile Cloud Computing: A Matching Game

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is an emerging computing paradigm that provides many advantages to mobile users but entails critical security concerns that slow down its adoption. In this paper, we approach the problem of resource allocation in MCC from a security perspective. The aim is to satisfy users' security requirements and service providers' security constraints, defined in the Security Service Level Agreement, through security integration into the process of resource allocation, to increase the security of the MCC system. The problem is modeled as a decentralized many-to-one matching game, in which mobile users and service providers evaluate their preferences during the resource allocation process in terms of security satisfaction. The game is then solved using an adapted version of the Gale/Shapley algorithm, which provides stability and computational efficiency. Our model can be implemented in large-scale MCC systems in a fully distributed fashion to enable securer offloading of mobile users' data and computational tasks.