We have had a few privacy- and security-focused smartphones over the past few years, from the German CryptoPhone 500 that can identify IMSI catchers to Silent Circle's Blackphone and its end-to-end encryption for voice calls and texts.
Kaymera Technologies, a security services company, is now also coming out with not just a secure phone, but a comprehensive mobile security solution that includes an off-the-shelf high-end smartphone, a secure operating system, encrypted communications, a device management framework and other security components such as sensors that protect the users against Man-In-The-Middle attacks.
“We've created an all-in-one, holistic mobile cyber defense solution designed to defend against all types of advanced mobile cyber-attacks, hostile takeovers and applications misuse, and served in a usable and seamless form factor to ensure the perfect balance between security and usability and enable end user's standard smartphone experience with maximum functionality," said Avi Rosen, Kaymera CEO and co-founder.
The Kaymera 360 solution comes with four layers of security: encryption, protection, prevention and detection.
The Encryption layer refers to data-at-rest being encrypted on the phone so that even if hackers or malware manage to get inside the operating system, the data is protected. Phone calls and messages are also encrypted, although Kaymera doesn't specify whether it's using end-to-end encryption like Silent Circle's Blackphone, or just TLS encryption.
The Protection layer includes technologies to protect the device from being penetrated by hackers through the Web, GSM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or USB connections. The protection suite sounds like a combination between an anti-virus and a firewall.
The Prevention layer is mainly about preventing either the user or malware from doing too much damage within the phone's system. Having too-high privileges within a computing system is generally a bad idea for most users, not just because they can do damage to the system themselves, but also because once some malware is inside, it also gets to abuse all of the advanced privileges the user might have.
The Detection layer is focused on active and targeted attacks against the Kaymera 360 users, which can happen through the Wi-Fi or GSM networks (IMSI catchers).
Kaymera seems to be focusing on enterprise customers. Many companies take mobile security very seriously, which is why some of them used to buy BlackBerry phones for all of their employees. However, ever since the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend caught on, security has been less prioritized.
With all of the latest cyber-attacks (whether state-sponsored or not), companies need to start looking for more advanced security solutions for all of their devices so that there are no obvious weaknesses left in the open. Kaymera Technologies wants to offer such a comprehensive solution through the Kaymera 360 security suite for mobile.
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