General Dynamics secures commercial smartphones for classified information
(Updated: November 2, 2016) In February this year, the communications division of defense contractor General Dynamics presented a software platform called GD Protected . This is the first product that secures commercial available Android smartphones in a way that they can be allowed to handle classified information. For decades, General Dynamics has been manufacturing devices for securing top level communications of the US government and armed forces, like the Sectéra voice encryption family. One of those products was a highly secure cell phone for GSM, which was produced from 2002 until 2012. Securing common cell phones generally requires hardware solutions, but to keep in pace with the fast evolving commercial smartphone technologies, security measures are now being implemented by using software applications. For smartphones there are already quite a number of apps for encrypting voice and data, but GD Protected also secures the Android operating system (OS) in order to meet the...