Technology has changed radically in recent years and at the same time, cyber criminals and hackers have become more sophisticated and ingenious, and thus, mobile security has become a big business and a high risk not only for general consumers, but for businesses and government in protecting sensitive data and communications.
In 2012, Senior Director of Consumerization at Trend Micro, Cesare Garlat, set out to conduct a survey to see which operating system was the safest.
“I put together a framework of analysis where I had 18 categories between security and manageability and asked them [experts that he surveyed] to rank the four operating systems,” said Garlat.
Unsurprisingly, Research in Motion’s (News - Alert) (RIM) enterprise-friendly BlackBerry OS is the safest of the four mobile operating systems. “BlackBerry is most manageable and secure for two reasons. One is that RIM, traditionally, has been an enterprise vendor. Two, is that RIM and BlackBerry (News - Alert) is the most mature, most stable and most enterprise-friendly out there.”
But the fall of Blackberry has many companies looking for alternative devices that are just as secure and reliable, thus leaving the playing field open for companies like Samsung (News - Alert), which announced its new Knox security software (compatibly as secure as Blackberry OS) at the 2014 Mobile World Conference, which is incorporated into its Galaxy S4 smartphone.
This year Samsung rolled out Galaxy S5 with Knox 2.0, which includes a number of advancements, like the two-factor biometric authentication, which requires both password and fingerprint verification to unlock. Other new features include a Knox Key Store for generating and managing encryption keys inside the TrustZone protected environment, as well as real-time monitoring to prevent unauthorized edits to kernel code, critical kernel data and system partitions. This is all in an effort to make a big play for enterprise users and government in 2014.
However, researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University recently announced that they discovered a major vulnerability that allows a hacker to easily intercept data (email and other communications) of a Knox-enabled Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. Ultimately, Samsung provided a statement that the vulnerability was with Android (News - Alert), but this shows the challenge that Samsung has with continually developing Knox to survive in a hostile environment.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon approved Apple (News - Alert)'s iPhones and iPads for use in the Department of Defense. Samsung devices also have the same security clearance.
It is unknown if the Galaxy security hole will be a factor in receiving government contracts, but with the high risks involved it will be interesting to see the outcome.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson