The Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information
Technology SIT and Center for Advanced Security Research Darmstadt CASED announced
that they have developed a security solution for Android-based smartphones:
“BizzTrust for Android”. The solution separates private and business
applications on the phone itself.
Security experts have now developed equipment software
with two separate areas: the business area and the personal area. Researchers
will unveil this development at the it-sa trade fair held October 11-13 in
Nuremberg.
BizzTrust smartphones offer two protected areas for data
and apps. They can identify whether content belongs to a business or a private
application, store it separately in the appropriate partition and control
access to the data during operation.
This enhances the security of business data while still
allowing employees to install as many private apps as they wish. Even if
attackers manage to infiltrate an unsecured app, they cannot use it to access
company data, and the impact of the attack is confined to the private data on
the smartphone.
“Our development significantly improves the security
of today-s mobile terminals at no cost to user-friendliness,” said
Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, director of Cyber-Physical Systems Security at the
SIT/CASED.
A color symbol shown in the display let the user know at
all times whether he or she is in the business or “red” area or in
the personal, “green” area of the smartphone. Two “clicks”
of the touchscreen is all it takes to toggle over to the respective other side.
To implement these two virtual smartphones in a single
device, the experts modified the Android operating system so that all data from
trustworthy applications is marked as such.
The company itself decides which applications are
released for business use, and who has access to what areas of company IT.
Because these rules may change over time, the business applications are updated
or deleted as needed as soon as the user links to the company network.
Researchers will present the BizzTrust for Android at the
it-sa trade fair. The next step for this technology is to equip smartphones
with integrated smartcards that provide additional security functions.
To supplement BizzTrust, researchers at SIT are now
teaming up with partner companies to develop tools to permit IT administrators
to manage smartphones on an everyday basis – the technology would establish a
secure link with the mobile device for wirelessly synchronization and backup of
the data stored there – or data deletion if the device is lost or stolen.
By Telecomlead.com Team
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