Two factor vs multi-factor, an authentication battle in mobile cloud computing environments

Mobile devices offer a convenient way of accessing our digital lives and many of those devices hold sensitive data that needs protecting. Mobile and wireless communications networks, combined with cloud computing as Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC), have emerged as a new way to provide a rich computational environment for mobile users, and business opportunities for cloud providers and network operators. It is the convenience of the cloud service and the ability to sync across multiple platforms/devices that has become the attraction to cloud computing. However, privacy, security and trust issues may still be a barrier that impedes the adoption of MCC by some undecided potential users. Those users still need to be convinced of the security of mobile devices, wireless networks and cloud computing. This paper is the result of a comprehensive review of one typical secure measure-authentication methodology research, spanning a period of five years from 2012 - 2017. MCC capabilities for sharing distributed resources is discussed. Authentication in MCC is divided in to two categories and the advantages of one category over its counterpart are presented, in the process of attempting to identify the most secure authentication scheme.