Securing the Internet metering and billing

In the near future, billing for network services will not only be concerned with time or volume based accounting but also in ways of measuring the quality of the service provided. Dynamic price schemes such as congestion-based charging have been proposed. In some of these models, the charging infrastructure relies on the distribution of electronic tariffs to end-users machines. The tariff structure includes the price information and an algorithm to calculate the charge. Thus, the monitoring of the network usage according to this tariff is essential within these frameworks.

However, little attention has been given to the security issues associated with Internet metering in these schemes. This has had a great impact on the new models proposed today, since security has become a major concern in open networks. Systems that naturally have incentive to frauds such as metering systems used for billing purposes must deal with security threats in large scale environments.

This article compiles the security issues of a dynamic networked system where electronic tariffs and Service Level Agreements (SLA) structures are distributed among service providers and customers. To address these issues, a set of security protocols are outlined.