UK GOV: There is an urgent requirement to find an alternative to BlackBerry

ComputerWeekly: A review by CESG concluded that iOS6, the latest operating system (OS) for iPhones and iPads, is now secure enough to handle restricted government information, providing departments build in additional security controls. CESG has warned that security on iO6 requires organisations to extend their network monitoring and security systems and relies on users correctly … Continue reading “UK GOV: There is an urgent requirement to find an alternative to BlackBerry”

ComputerWeekly:

A review by CESG concluded that iOS6, the latest operating system (OS) for iPhones and iPads, is now secure enough to handle restricted government information, providing departments build in additional security controls.

CESG has warned that security on iO6 requires organisations to extend their network monitoring and security systems and relies on users correctly using the iPhone security features. Failure to follow any of these controls could compromise information security, said the guidelines.

…the government ought to be able to enforce the same policy on Apple iO6 devices as RIM’s BlackBerry 7 OS, including full device encryption, the ability to remote wipe, and locking down apps to ensure no further ones could be added to the device if necessary.

It was only a matter of time. I’m guessing that a lot of government types will keep their Blackberry devices. A lot might mean 20% of the 20,000 devices out there.

none of the smartphones were successfully exploited

Slashdot writes: TippingPoint had offered $10,000 for each exploit on any of the phones, which included the iPhone and the BlackBerry, as well as phones running the Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android operating systems. With the mobile devices so limited on memory and processing power, a lot of [researchers’] main exploit techniques are not able … Continue reading “none of the smartphones were successfully exploited”

Slashdot writes:

TippingPoint had offered $10,000 for each exploit on any of the phones, which included the iPhone and the BlackBerry, as well as phones running the Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android operating systems.
With the mobile devices so limited on memory and processing power, a lot of [researchers’] main exploit techniques are not able to work,

The problem being that phones are going to get more powerful rather than less so there’s still work to be done on mobile security. They’re going to get memory and processing rivalling some recent generation desktop and laptop machines. Two years ago, @dressjunkie’s main computer was a 1 GHz Celeron desktop with 256 MB RAM. Her current iPhone is a 667MHz processor running at 412MHz with 128 MB RAM. The next generation iPhone may well run faster (considering the iPod Touch 2nd Generation runs at 533 MHz!).

I guess we can look forward to great exploits in the future. iPhone is pretty much untested here – the only mobile OS to make it to UK GOV CESG testing and survive is RIM’s Blackberry. iPhone hasn’t been tested by CESG and Windows Mobile has been tested and rejected five times.