The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory team on project Mobile Armor
The military continues to get ever-more serious about securing mobile smartphones and tablets. The latest example: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Army Research Laboratory awarded a multi-year, $21.4 million contract to security start up Invincea, to lock down Android-based mobile operating system devices through a program known as Mobile Armor.
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In a press release the company said its software currently is being tested on Android phone and tablets, “by thousands of U.S. Army personnel in Afghanistan.” Based on this early success, DARPA and the US Army are expanding the scope of the Mobile Armor project to include significant new security enhancements to the Android platform with this award.
According to Invincea its current package includes a desktop security software suite and threat intelligence appliance and protects against a variety of threats directed at end-users, including zero-day, by moving applications that render untrusted content into controlled, secure virtual environments that automatically detect and terminate threats in real time. Invincea’s platform moves the browser, PDF reader, Microsoft Office suite, .zip, and .exe file types from the native operating system into secure virtualized environments without altering the user experience, the company stated.
The company released few details on how the Mobile Armor systems would work but did say while the project focuses on bringing security to Android operating system devices for government it expects any developments to ultimately be made available to the commercial world.
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